THE

GOAL OF LIFE

BY

HIRAM BUTLER

1908

The Goal of Life By Hiram Butler.

This edition was created and published by Global Grey

©GlobalGrey 2019

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CONTENTS

Logical Structure of this Work

Preface

To The Reader

Chapter 1. Development

Chapter 2. The Existence Of Higher Faculties

Chapter 3. Reason And Religion

Chapter 4. Conscience

Chapter 5. Evolution

Chapter 6. Other Worlds Than Ours

Chapter 7. The Immensity Of The Universe

Chapter 8.The Great Name, Yahveh

Chapter 9. The Manifestation Of Yahveh

Chapter 10. Mind-Centers

Chapter 11. The Elohim

Chapter 12. The Eternal Order Of Melchisedek

Chapter 13. Jesus Of The Order Of Melchisedek

Chapter 14. The Angels Of God

Chapter 15. The Miraculous Conception

Chapter 16. The Image Of God

Chapter 17. The Likeness Of God

Chapter 18. The Likeness Of God

Chapter 19. The Likeness Of God

Chapter 20. The Image And The Likeness

The Personal Application

EXIT FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW

Chapter 21. Part 1

Chapter 22. Part 2

Chapter 23. Part 3

Chapter 24. Part 4

Chapter 25. Part 5

Chapter 26. Part 6. Prayer

LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF THIS WORK

The facts in nature are the foundation out of which all consciousness and knowledge grow. Science is the outgrowth of these facts through careful investigation and study. Revelation is facts derived from the inner-consciousness—intuition—which is allied to the cause-world and is cognizant of the mind from which it originated, or from messengers (angels) from God.

Revelation united with science gives a substantial foundation for philosophy and theology, which are the proper outgrowth of science and revelation.

Philosophy is the mathematics of reason applied.

PREFACE

Our excuse for offering this book to the world in a time when books have become a drug on the market, will be found in the following: In the history of Christianity we believe that knowledge of God and of the Christ has never been so vague and uncertain as at present. There is in the intuitive mind, a consciousness that there is something which if known would put in order and harmonize the revelation of the Spirit and the faith of the Christ with science. This consciousness on the part of the many, is a hunger and an outreaching of the soul for some one to put in order, in a brief and concise form, the great truths that have been obscured by the beliefs of the world for all the ages past. This we have tried to do.

If we have been able to present to the mind of the thinker, first, a reasonable idea of God, second, if we have been able to remove a vague, uncertain mystery that shrouds man's relation to God and to bring him face to face with something that he can take hold of tangibly—not with his devotional nature only, but with his reason and with the ordinary consciousness—then we shall feel that we have accomplished much.

Our effort herein has been to expand the conception of God, the conception of the universe, and of the immensity of all that is; and to show that in this immensity there is found a unity, in this unity a mind that has a purpose, and that this mind has in it all power and is therefore ruling absolutely, as the vitality and potentiality of all that is, therefore the purpose in this mind—the object for which all things exist—is being carried out with absolute certainty, nothing being able to resist it, for all life upon this planet is as a drop taken from the great ocean of life and must ever remain subject to the law of its Source.

We have herein brought to light the fact that the great work that is being carried on by the Infinite Mind—his ultimate object—is to form mind-centers to be acted upon and through, in the control and government of the world, and that these mind-centers are to be manifested in the individualized manhood of our race, brought to light in the Revelation as the first ripe fruit of the earth, who are to be kings and priests unto God and to reign on the earth.

We have brought to light also the fact that, becoming kings and priests unto God and reigning on the earth, is placed at man's disposal, and that there are methods as old as creation by which man may lay hold upon these universal laws and become master of them and by the knowledge of these laws become the king of the whole earth, the embodiment of the mind and will of the planet, the expressor of the mind of God in the governing of all creation below him.

Finally, it has been our purpose to bring to light that which has been a mystery to the world—the Christ, who and what he is, and his mission.

If we succeed in this, our purpose, we shall, we believe, reveal the mystery of all religion, the key to all scientific knowledge, and shall unveil the mystery of life and the means by which men may conquer death and thus be saved and become the saviors of the people from the cause of their suffering and death.

TO THE READER

He that thinks to know the contents of this book by glancing through it, will know nothing about it.

To the literary critic we would say that there has been no effort toward literary excellence, but the effort has been to obtain clearness of thought as far as possible with condensation, for there has been condensed in this volume thought enough to make many similar volumes . Because of this fact, there are many instances where it has been necessary to repeat the thought in order to keep the central idea before the mind.

The great Master said, "He that is of God heareth the words of God." So say we, they that are of God will perceive in this volume truth of great importance; they that are not of God, but are reading purely with the reason, will find much to criticize, and will even throw aside the book with the feeling that it is worthless; for the things that belong to the higher consciousness, to the real world, are foolishness to those that live only in the material world.

Therefore we commit this work into the hands of the public and to the mind of the Spirit, feeling assured that it will do the work for which it is designed.

CHAPTER 1. DEVELOPMENT

The beginnings of organized life act from instinct without brain-power to define and guide the impulse. The insect moves about apparently without aim, a little way in one direction, and back, then in another. Universal Life runs it in accordance with its form and quality, as the water runs the waterwheel. But as experience is gathered from hunger, meeting enemies, and the general struggle for existence, brain-powers begin to develop, and with the developing of the brain the general nervous structure develops and refines. In this way Universal Mind takes of the elements of the earth and organizes for itself a body through which to find expression, through which to carry forward a line of growth toward the fulness of manhood.

In its early history, the race was largely dominated by the instincts, because it was without sufficient brain-power correctly to define the mental impulses from the cause-side. It was not until a comparatively advanced stage of racial progress that the higher light of intuition appeared.[1]

Because mind always turns toward its source, consciousness toward its origin, man has always been a religious being; but before the reasoning faculties were sufficiently developed to have an intelligent recognition of the impulses of the Universal Mind, his religion was as immature as his mentality and he worshipped the sun, moon, and stars, and images of his own ideals.

During this period the intellect was slowly unfolding, and as an aid to its growth, "Revelation," in the external types and shadows of its manifestation, was given to the people as they could receive it, for it was in this form that the earlier revelations came to the race.

It is a law that thought suggested to the mind, though not understood, much less comprehended, builds itself into the organism, so that when the building is complete the meaning of the thought is grasped. Therefore revelation came first in types and shadows, the external form of the vital energy that was within.

Added revelation was given as fast as the race developed sufficiently to receive it, but the vital reality was always represented by some material

symbol, and in the effort to interpret the revelation gross errors crept in. In addition to this there were other fruitful sources of error. Being largely under the control of the instincts, the people were exceedingly superstitious—every manifestation of the incomprehensible, the grand, or the sublime, was to them always through the direct intervention of some unseen being. Thus, in addition to the nature-forces, a multiplicity of gods took form in the popular mind, and the pantheons of the different nations came into existence.

Again, the inclination of the human mind to seek cause readily developed into a search for magic power. There is and always has been in the human will a power entirely incomprehensible—a fact which led the earlier nations into ceremonial magic, the black arts, and all the equipments of a religious and superstitious mind. But the coming of the Christ to earth lifted the race above this dark cloud of superstition; for it is universally admitted that the Christian religion lies at the foundation of the height and glory of our civilization.

Nevertheless, as the records of the past show that there was an apparently darkened mental condition of the world at the time of the revelation of our Bible, and because the mind of the day is turned almost exclusively toward scientific investigation of the laws of nature, those mental states that led the race into the light of revelation seem crude and repulsive. The present trend of the mentality is to turn altogether from intuition and to depend wholly upon the reasoning brain. A study of the record of racial experience during the centuries of the past, especially of the nations immediately allied to our own, and the present scientific investigation of a most materialistic character, complete the education given in our colleges and to our clergy. Ever is held up that frightful effigy of the darkened mind of the past as a warning against credulity and superstition.

This effigy has intensified a materialistic mentality, and has caused the educated classes to fear even to admit to their own souls the possibility of revelation or the active principle of intuition. They have practically shut out everything that savors in the slightest degree of a manifestation of spiritual activity, and, consequently, spiritual inspiration and added revelation are no longer possible.

The terms "inspiration" and "revelation" have been misapplied, and therefore need definition: Inspiration bears to revelation the relation of cause to effect. Inspiration is not necessarily the act of a human agent becoming a medium of expression for a being in the spirit-world, but it is a well-known phenomenon of every-day life. The act of recalling a thought we call "re-collection;" that is, we have had an experience and have forgotten it, a suggestion comes to our mind of something concerning this experience and we wish to recall it. The mind is at once concentrated upon the desired thought, every other thought intruding itself is repelled, and the mind—held in the attitude of desiring, reaching out for one definite thought—draws in, inspires, the refined substance generated in the body and expressed through the brain at the time of the experience.

This wonderful formative-principle, active in all growth throughout the world, has its highest manifestation in the brain of man; and the subtle elements, generated in the body by past experience of thinking, are called again into the brain—recollected—and they are remembered. Every part of the occurrence is put together again, member to member, and the experience in all its original form and power stands out before the consciousness which recognizes that which is past.

In like manner, when the heart is sad from a sense of something to be known which is not known, the same faculty is called into activity and reaches out into the realm of Universal Mind to gather that which is desired. The sadness of heart produces a negative state in the inner consciousness, and intensifies desire. Under such circumstances the individual gathers from the unknown, and otherwise unknowable, the knowledge of which the soul feels the need. The knowledge thus inspired, when formed in the mind, becoming a vivid realization, is a phase of revelation.

Still another form of revelation is that received when God sees that a man needs knowledge of something of importance to himself or to the race. Under such circumstances—the inner attitude obtaining in the mind—angels from the world of souls are frequently sent to him with messages of truth and wisdom.

But in order to receive the message, the man, as the great teacher said, must become as a little child—he must realize that he does not know and earnestly desire to know. Because of this fact revelation from the spirit-world is always preceded by a condition which breaks down the selfish mentality, and produces in the individual an earnest, child-like desire to know and to do the right. This destroys, for the time being, all preconceived ideas; enabling the mind to be receptive and to listen. Then the messenger who is sent from on high, all unknown to the individual, draws near and unites his mentality with the mentality of the one to whom he is sent, thus causing him to know even as the messenger knows. Therefore, in place of a command from a controlling mind, a loving unity is formed for the time and the man is treated as a "friend of God."

But fear of every kind, even fear of error, fear of what people may say, an undue appreciation of one's own mental capacity, a disposition to criticize anything that may not agree with preconceived ideas—everything not in accordance with the thought of the messenger tends to repel him and to reject his message.

The education of the present day is such that even the most devout and earnest are afraid to receive revelation from God, and therefore the door is practically closed between God in the spirit-world and man in the material world. There are barriers set up against everything except physical experience, and, consequently, new and added revelation of spiritual truth cannot be received.

Not only is the "trained mind," barred in every direction except in the direction of physical experience, but even here it must specialize; that is, restrict itself to a particular line of a very limited department of investigation. Thus the person atrophies by disuse every faculty of even the external mind, except those necessary to the very narrow line of activities to which he is confined. To those familiar with the faculties of our great universities, the effect of this most absolute sacrifice of the individual to the cause of popular education is very evident. The broader intellectual interests are closed to its members, and, except in the department of their own work, they are to a decided degree mentally incapacitated. One can look into their faces and almost tell the line of specialization each has chosen.

Not only do our leading educators, but the majority of the men who lead in the research of the time, sacrifice themselves to the advancement of science. But it is well known that if a man is to attain marked success in any direction, he must focalize his whole mind upon that subject; results are reached in this way that can be obtained in no other.

The Cyclopean eye figures a reality of life referred to by our Lord when he said: "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." (Matt. vi. 22.) For purposes of concentration upon one subject, the physical eyes and the eyes of the mind become one—physically upon the book before you, mentally upon the thought under consideration. And when concentration is upon material things, the eye sees nothing else. The Cyclopean eye of to-day has its development in the specialization of the intellectual world. Therefore the education of modern times, conforming the mind as it does to its present channels, is in itself necessary and good, notwithstanding the fact that it narrows the range of the intellectual vision.

A phenomenon of mind, before referred to, is that inspiration takes place when the entire attention is focalized upon one subject to the exclusion of every other. But in order to obtain this condition of concentration, it is necessary to repel—which is a combative attitude—every thought but the one sought. In our educational institutions we find this necessary repulsion carried to an extreme of an intolerance which condemns and rules out the higher faculties of the human mind, the faculties that lie at the very root, the foundation of consciousness, and with them is excluded the spirit of devotion or recognition of God.

The accepted training of the mind is good in that it teaches the use of the perceptive faculties, to formulate orderly thought in regard to observable facts of physical nature, and gives control of the external mentality, but, sad to say, the present methods array the entire consciousness against God, the Spirit, and destroy the ability to reason from cause to effect, training the mind to reason exclusively from effect to cause, while, strange contradiction, cause is at the same time ignored.

Some of our able men have noted the fact, that it takes but a year or two in our theological institutions to eradicate the habit of religious devotion, and in its place to imbue the mind with the spirit of infidelity—infidelity to one's own highest attributes of mind and soul consciousness, and infidelity in regard to the validity of Bible Revelation.

If this is the course of instruction given by religious teachers, is it surprizing that the religion of Christ is at such a low ebb in the world to-day? The vital thought-currents of the race are despised, condemned and repelled, and only those faculties recognized which have unfolded through the struggle of animal existence from its lowest form up to the present highly developed animal part of human nature. Then we are asked: If the things of which we are about to write are true, why have they not been known before?—The reason is obvious in the fact that we, as civilized nations, have been working so diligently to close the door to all approaches from the cause-side.

These conditions have grown out of fear—perhaps justifiable fear; for, in the absence of a mind that has surveyed the whole road and is capable of grasping the problem of life and putting in order before the people the broader outlines of truth—the great scheme of growth and development—the prevailing materialistic intolerance has been the protection against the grossest superstition and error. Under existing circumstances the best thing possible has been done. Throughout can be traced the general plan of the great Creative Mind that formed the world and man upon it.

It is a well-known fact that a man can do but one piece of work at a time. Therefore the Creator—or, if you please, the creative-forces working in the growth of the different races in different periods of the world's history—developed first a consciousness of the unseen and cause world; but, as we have said, the incapacity of the brain correctly to interpret causation made it necessary to take the race into the external activities, and round out to completeness the capacities of the gray matter in its relation to the physical world.

These capacities have been developed, and does not the time, the stage of development, the need of the people, cause the crying demand of the day for other and higher revelation?—a demand that we go back, pick up, and carry forward that faculty of instinct that lies at the very foundation of our being, that we take hold upon it by the matured brain-power, and develop in the race the intuitional power that will enable man to become more like his Creator—with a right hand to grasp the material universe and its workings and a left hand to grasp the spiritual forces and laws of causation, and thus blend his spiritual nature into a well-rounded and complete manhood.

CHAPTER 2. THE EXISTENCE OF HIGHER FACULTIES

Man in his developing has become overbalanced in the direction of the reasoning faculties, and, as suggested in the preceding chapter, the harmony of a well-rounded maturity demands that the intuitional faculties be understood and given their full function. As intelligent, thinking beings, we find ourselves here with but a vague idea of how we came to be here, or of what forces projected us into being, and with less idea of the origin of conscious intelligence.

In order to obtain a knowledge of such truths, we must have an adequate conception of the immensity of the universe and of its eternal duration, and a realization that we are integral parts of the universe, integral parts of something we have discerned faintly, and vaguely defined as law, nature. In the dark ages of human intelligence when it was illuminated only from its source, this something about which so little is known was called "God," a term which expressed the idea of power only—all-mighty, all-comprehensive power.

From this very early phase of human experience, have come two modes of thought and action—the reasoning mentality and the intuitional mind had their beginning in this period. That intuitional mind has been termed the "subjective mind" and, in the religious cults of the past, it has been mystically known as the mind of the soul; and the inquiry as to what the soul is, has brought out many answers uncertain and unsatisfactory to the mind analytic in its tendencies. The nearest approach to a satisfactory definition is, that it is the thinking part of man's nature, which is as far from satisfactory as it is inadequate as a definition.

If we accept the Bible Revelation that God created the world and all that is in it by a word, then we must accept as a fact also that we were created by that word. This, at least, suggests the thought that we are but a part of the Universal Mind, having been organized and given limitations that we term the individual consciousness. These limitations may be called the ego, and that which is limited, the soul.

For illustration, if we take an air-tight vessel and seal it up so that no air can get in or out, then the air originally in the vessel will remain, no matter where the vessel may be carried, even though it is forced into the depths of the ocean. It is so with the original consciousness of man's existence. It is part of the All-Mind and through organization it has been shut in and given limitations, and these limitations are determined by the uses arising in the necessity for maintenance of its individualized existence. This fact makes it evident that the stronger the ego, the narrower are the limitations of the individual. It follows, therefore, that in the developing and in the expanding of the individual, there need be an overcoming of self-love and the eradication of too much self-appreciation, in order that the consciousness may become receptive to the fountains from which it draws its existence.

We agree, therefore, in the assertion that individuality as such is an organized condition of life, and we agree also in the belief that life did not originate with us nor with our ancestors. This being true and life being the source of our consciousness, the possibility of opening up the limitations of the ego is again suggested to the mind, thus giving free access to the inflow of the Universal Life.

Special methods bearing directly upon this subject characterize all the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

Nevertheless the experiences of the past and of many persons at the present time, demonstrate the fact that this letting go of the strength of the ego, and being passive to the inflow of Universal Life have been destructive to the individuality. Notable among such instances is the spiritualistic medium who becomes passive and receptive to whatever may flow in. As a matter of fact, there flows into such a person just what he or she believes. And as these people believe in the existence of spirits —disincarnate souls—therefore individualities or thought-forms, dark and malicious characteristics of their own lower natures, flow in and possess them and, as Christ said, the last state of these people is worse than the first.

Again, we have all seen the religious devotee who, without a knowledge of God or of universal law, has relinquished the ego to a certain extent and, opening himself to the Universal Mind, has become fanatical even to the loss of his individuality—insane. The reasoning intelligence has taken such examples as a warning against opening the selfhood to the Universal Mind. Just here, however, we meet a law of mind so well known as to have escaped critical inquiry, which is explained in what follows:

In the preceding chapter we referred to the law of inspiration, that we draw in, inspire, whatever the mind is centered upon to the exclusion of all else, and that the wonderful formative principle dominating human consciousness at once makes an image, a thought-form, of that which is indrawn. But in the process the principle of discrimination is called into action—a principle which in vegetable life, being nearest the creative source and therefore purest in character, expresses itself most perfectly. When a seed is placed in the ground, the chemist knowing the properties of the original plant is able to predict with absolute certainty what chemical elements the growing seed will gather to itself out of which to build a like organism. The same principle, finding expression in the human consciousness, is taken control of by the organized mentality and may be suspended in its action, directed in its course, or intensified in its operation, and thus, being under the control of the individual, produces manifold results. Therefore as soon as the individual by means of the concentration previously noted, opens himself to the inflow of Universal Life (we shall see further on, that life and mind are synonymous terms) that in which he believes flows in and its image takes form in the mind and becomes for the time his consciousness.

It has been demonstrated that a person believing in a certain deranged and consequently diseased condition of the body, actually produces this condition; and there have been instances in which the physical body has been destroyed by this means. Belief is an all-powerful factor in human life and for this reason the necessity is imperative that the reasoning mind or, if you please, the guiding intelligence derived from experience, take control of the activities of the inner life and consciousness.

When there exists correct knowledge of the workings of the intuitional faculties, and the individual is able to take control of this function, then it will be found that these higher faculties are the dominant faculties of the real self, that they are that part of man's nature which, even in the absence of conscious thought, knows that he exists and needs only an impulse of desire to call in from the Universal Mind unformed thought-elements. These unformed thought-elements, when carried to the reasoning brain, give it to know, both by inductive and deductive methods, that which is beyond the ken of the mere reasoning mind or the mere instinctive action.

From the foregoing, we may reasonably conclude that the higher faculties, now dormant in the race, may be brought into activity at will, and the consciousness allied to all that is in the Universal Mind and that thus the individual may select therefrom whatever is needed. We think, therefore, it has been made clear that in the evolvement of the individual by means of the inflow of qualities of Universal Mind there are active three factors:

First, the principle of inspiration, which draws in, causes to flow in, the qualities of Universal Life, where all qualities exist. Second, the formative principle of human intelligence, so perfect in its workings, that any quality that is indrawn is at once put into its proper form according to its specific quality. Third, belief, which underlies these two principles and controls the result of their activity, and determines the character or quality of the life inspired, and consequently decides what form it takes in the individual consciousness. Therefore belief decides the character of the intuition.

From what has been said, the thinking mind will find suggestions which answer the question as to why such monstrous errors, superstitions and evil results of every kind have overtaken those who have depended exclusively upon the "inner consciousness," the instinctive mentality. Because of the facts just presented, the great religious teachers of the immediate past have emphasized the necessity of the reasoning mind—of the knowing. We read in Hosea iv. 6, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge," and also the words of the Lord Christ (John viii. 32): "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free"—free from those dangers that have beset the race from the beginning to the present time.

But since belief, as we have seen, controls the inspiratory and formative principles of the individual life, we have reached a point in the growth of the race where mind, the reasoning mind, must discover certain general principles of absolute truth in order that the faculties of inspiration and intuition may be safely used, or, in the language of the ancient mystics, in order that the individual may go out into the realm of the Universal Mind, discover and obtain knowledge that the advancing needs of the people are beginning to demand.

With this thought in mind we shall endeavor in the following pages to expand our idea of human origin, of organized intelligence, of the fountains of life, and the oneness of God, the Cause of all. We shall suggest methods also by which we may gather and incorporate within us a greater amount of the Universal Life, methods by which that life may be refined, sensitized and intensified, thus giving it enormous added capacity, and methods that will give assurance of the correctness of the process from its beginning through each step of its course.

CHAPTER 3. REASON AND RELIGION

In considering the underlying and causative principles governing the two factors that give power, the one, the "Reason," or the intellect, and the other, the sentiment that we call "Religion," we necessarily enter an unknown realm, for mind must study its cause—the stream must rise to its fountain.

Therefore in order to study the causes underlying mental phenomena, we must reach out and inspire from the fountains of mind. We read that when Jesus was speaking to the people of his day who failed to understand the meaning of his words, he said to them, "He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God." (John viii. 47.) He here intimated the possibility of touching a sphere of mind lying beyond that which is normal to the human faculties. And, after all these centuries of the growth and the development of the race and of the influence of the Christian Religion, have we not a right to believe that there is a large body of men and women in the world that have incorporated within themselves a quality of mind transcendently above the mere human mind, or, shall we say, the animal mind?

In view of these facts, we shall attempt to search into some of the fountains from which come those faculties ultiinating in what we term "Reason" and "Religion." Because the realm is an unexplored one and there are no ready-made terms in which to express the thought, we ask our readers to help us by studying themselves introspectively.

To begin with the investigation of the reasoning faculties: Why is it that you cannot always use these faculties with equal facility? There are times when, strive as you may to reason out a problem, the mind does not seem to be in tune for its work. Under such circumstances we ask you to turn within and carefully to seek the cause there. Do you not find that there is some disturbance of the vital-currents? Can you reason to advantage when there are inharmonies and combative conditions that you are compelled to meet? Combativeness and anger confuse the mind and prevent clear, logical reasoning. On the other hand, when surrounded by loving friends, kind thoughts, genial associations, your mind works freely and there is no trouble to reason clearly, positively, and correctly. Does not this at least suggest that there is something behind the phenomenon of what we call the reasoning mind? The sick man is not capable of deep reasoning. The man engaged in research and deep thought finds it necessary to keep the life-currents—the health and vigor of the body—in the best condition in order to do his best work.

Another suggestive fact is, that intense concentration of thought and close reasoning, exhaust the body even more rapidly than physical labor. The thought seems to partake of and to use up the life of the body, suggesting that, in some way, mind is directly connected with life.

Let us inquire into how we think, not into the methods applied to bring thought into form, but into that which precedes, the means by which we approach those activities which produce the actual thought.

There is first a desire and a will to do, followed by the turning of the mind and the centralizing of it upon the subject that we wish to consider. The question here arises as to what is meant when we say that we have turned the mind to the consideration of a subject. Does it not mean that we have turned the consciousness in a given direction? and is not the life within us that which produces consciousness? What is this within the human organism that makes us conscious when there is no special interest, thought, or effort in any direction? This consciousness that we are seems to carry forward the beating of the heart, the circulating of the blood, the digesting of the food, and all the processes of life without any apparent effort or annoyance on our part. The child lives, grows, plays, and amuses itself while this something that we call life is carrying on the work of building and developing the child into the man.

If, however, the slightest derangement occurs in the internal workings of the body, pain is the result, and the peace and joy in the consciousness of being is disturbed. As this consciousness controls the body in its work of self-building and self-maintenance in the child as well as the man, may it not be called vital-thought?

In the consideration of intuition, in the preceding chapter, we referred to the law in accordance with which we were brought into being, in accordance with which the life is gathered from God the Creative Source, ensphered and bound for the uses of the organism. Now this life has within itself all qualities. There is the life that organizes and forms the bird, the cat-life, that forms the cat, the horse-life, that forms the horse—each one of the different qualities of life forms an organism suitable for the expression of its own kind or quality. Even if we do not admit that God is the Creator of all things, we must admit that there is a fountain from which all creative-life springs and multiplies its kind. We know also that the study of living creatures shows that some live, grow, and are normal and happy under conditions which would be destructive to others, again showing the great variety in the quality of life. And whether these various forms of animate existence think or not, they certainly act in many respects as man acts when he thinks. So that we cannot avoid the suggestion that the kind or quality of life is the kind of thought, desire, and consequently, action.

When we turn our attention to the human family, we recognize there also a great diversity of thought, desire, sympathy, and feature. No two men look alike nor do they think alike. It is a fact well understood in our courts that two or three men viewing the same scene, see it so differently that a disinterested person listening to their testimony cannot but feel that some one is perjuring himself. Apparently, two sets of factors come into action to produce this diversity of mind and consciousness:

First, the quality of life from which the thought is formed. Second, the beliefs of the person.

But, in reality, the quality of life, that is, the character of the consciousness—or vital-thought just defined—is determined by the beliefs of the person according to his sphere of use; for the beliefs govern the inspirations which in turn give quality to the life. The plant gathers to itself the elements for use in its growth and preservation; but the human mind, being more highly developed, may gather as wide a diversity of qualities as it has diversity of desire, that is, it may gather any quality that it believes to be useful.

The consciousness of the individual, being an aggregate of qualities of universal consciousness, bound or ensphered for a purpose, for use, the individual is acting under a law which enables him to gather within himself, ensphere as an added consciousness, the element of any vital-thought that he believes to be useful.

It is intimated in the early portion of this chapter, and we believe it is generally admitted, that the activities of the reasoning mind spring from this inner selfhood, that which we have termed the vital-thought. Why could not our ancestors in the early stages of the race reason so clearly as we of modern times? Were they not drawing and living from the same great fountains from which we live?—Certainly they were, but experience had not matured more perfect brain organs, broader beliefs, and wider sympathies and desires. It has been well said by one of the ancients that "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."

At this point we meet the coincidence of reason and religion. Can we divorce them? Are they not a dual manifestation of the same underlying principle?—They are, most unquestionably. Religion has as a base love, desire. Reason is the phenomenon of love. The difference is that religion opens up the life toward its Cause, and reason directs life into the active phenomena of forming, or, better still, of being formed into images of which the sensory nerves of the brain take cognizance, when they become conscious thought. But the quality of the thought, as well as the quality of the love, depends upon the quality of the life, and all these depend upon the underlying phenomena of the foundation belief. Why did Jesus the Christ hold so firmly and continuously before the people the importance of belief, and of right belief? Not only so, but he insisted upon the fact that belief without a doubt would give power to control physical nature around one. So extreme was his utterance as to claim that by the means of this belief mountains could be removed from their place. A careful investigator may experiment in the everyday walks of life upon this power of belief in its control of the inspirations of the person.

There are a people among us denominated Spiritualists. The major part of these people are the legitimate outcome of religious devotion on the part of their parents. Spiritualistic mediums are such by organic structure, which leads them to open up their life-centers to the psychic currents around them. In order to be mediums they must be perfectly passive to these influences. Now do not say that mediums are frauds. It is true that some of them are, but many of them are working with forces of which they have no understanding.

If you wish to experiment in this direction, sit before a medium and call into activity some point of belief that is latent within you. The medium will probably go into a trance, bring up the subject most active in your mind and begin to ingather and present evidences of the truth of that in which you believe. It matters not whether it is true or not, the medium will inspire, formulate and give you evidences of its truth. Have you not observed the fact that the more a man thinks on a subject of his belief, the more firmly convinced is he of its truth, so that nothing short of the most absolute proof can shake his confidence? Usually this proof must be so overwhelming as to carry conviction to every sense of his entire nature.

Because of this law governing human mind and consciousness, religion should be based upon the conclusions of the clearest reason, in which case belief, the principle underlying the two, will be correct—not specific belief, but belief in its relation to general principles. But to be sure of reliable conclusions, reason must be able to command reliable premises. For what to the world have been the centuries of scientific investigation, the vast resources spent in scientific appliances, if not to discover facts and laws upon which Reason may base correct conclusions?

Thus giving Reason and Religion the sure foundation of correct beliefs upon which to rest. Truly, he who neglects to improve the wealth of opportunity, born of such labor and expenditure of means, is remiss in the duty he owes to himself and to his fellow men.

Because of the enlightenment of the race, Reason and Religion must hereafter go forth hand in hand, must stand bosom to bosom, as most lovingly devoted counterparts.

Religion is the outflowing, the opening up, of the love toward an object which is believed to be the most desirable, and when man has learned intelligently to open the soul toward its Cause, he will then find the fountains of all knowledge. And he has that in him which enables him to draw in—inspire—and cause to act upon the sensorium of his brain the very essence of all there is.

When the fundamental principle of belief is properly laid, then the reasoning brain will take these essences and form them into images, and these images will become living-stones in the construction of that temple of knowledge in which will dwell God, formed as the immortal soul, and man—the knowing intelligence.

CHAPTER 4. CONSCIENCE

This selfhood, this consciousness that is conscious without the effort of thinking, this something that is the man, that thinks without his volition, this vital-principle, we must admit, has been derived from the creative-forces. If this is true and if God is the Cause and Source of creation, then it is derived directly from God, for God did not create something from nothing, but from himself. Therefore all the life that has been gathered into an organism must be the life of God; and since we can find no place for a boundary-line between life and mind, we are brought back to the Revelation which says that God by a word created the world. Consequently this life, pure and free, that animates our being, is God's mind and must be orderly and correct in all its conclusions—a fact we have observed in our consideration of the intuitional faculties.

But, notwithstanding this truth, there exists an underlying cause which brings error to the mind and death to the body. This cause arises in the nature of the creative-word that embodied in itself a definite purpose and this purpose became a law governing all life—the purpose being to make man like his Creator, having dominion over all things. For this reason, God, the Spirit, gives himself as a servant to the reasoning mind, and while the manifestation is simply the manifestation of the animal instinct, directed by the reason, it is in accordance with pure nature and always informs the mind correctly. But through the love of self, self-gratification, strong desires arise in the appetites and passions which dominate and overrule the admonitions of the Divine Mind.

Nevertheless, the divine purpose being that the individual is to be the master and that he is to learn and to know, his errors are the means by which experience teaches him the result of disobedience to this divine admonition in the soul, for knowledge is born of experience only.

The divine-life, the creative-life, in man is absolutely obedient to his wishes and desires, that is, if a man desires a thing that is destructive to him or that is wrong in any way, this divine-self admonishes him of the fact, causes him to feel that it is wrong. But if he argues with the higher intelligence he can coerce it to admit what he wishes it to believe, so that in the reasoning mind it becomes a belief without a doubt. Yet, whenever the reasoning mind is quiet, the interior intelligence continues to impress the consciousness with the fact that its belief is wrong. Each time, however, the reasoning mind rejects its admonition it becomes weaker and is finally silenced, then the belief becomes the law of the individual.

For illustration, a young man beginning life, forms conclusions from his contact with the world as to correct methods for accomplishing his highest ambitions. The divine-life within constantly remonstrates with him against certain of these conclusions, but he reasons the matter out, justifies his position, in short, creates a code of laws, obedience to which, he justifies, and disobedience to which, he condemns. Every intelligent being does this. He may accept the ready-made laws held in common by those around him, but he creates a set of laws in connection with them, if not an entirely new set. But whatever laws are accepted by the person are also accepted by the divine-self, the intuitive, vital consciousness, and the divine-self acts in accordance with them.

God in man, like an over-indulgent mother, serves him faithfully in his desires and beliefs, preserving the body, eliminating poisons, and gathering for him the pure essence of life; but when his sinning against nature has made his case hopeless in view of the original purpose, then the Divine within him unites with the adverse forces to tear down the organism and thus to destroy him. Now bear in mind the following: Appetites and passions create desires; by means of the reasoning faculties, desires create beliefs of which the soul-consciousness, the divine-life within, makes a law, the law of the individual life. This law is the religious faith, and when it is established, the conscience justifies everything in accordance with it and condemns everything contrary to it. Consequently conscience, which the world and especially the church have relied upon as a guide, becomes a guide in its relation only to established beliefs.

Take in illustration the story of the Arab father whose wife became the mother of a beautiful female child. According to his religious belief, the child must be destroyed, as it was not among the number that it was lawful to preserve. But the child was very beautiful and the mother persuaded the father to allow it to live. As the years went on, however, his conscience pricked him continually, and as the child neared maturity he could no longer endure the condemnation of conscience and consequently put the girl to death. Had he been a Christian, he would have considered this act a great crime and his conscience never would have forgiven him, but with the Arab, the case was reversed.

Now the question arises: If this life, this source of the intuitive and higher mentality, this producer of all mind, is one with God the Creator of all things, why should it impress one in a certain direction and another in the opposite direction? The answer is, in order that the creative-purpose may be worked out in nature, and individual experience become knowledge from which to form a law more and more correct, a law finally in harmony with divine law, a law according to the nature of the God of the universe.

In order that man may realize that he only is responsible for every act of his life, he must be at liberty to commit error and to suffer the result of it, and to do right and to enjoy the benefits arising therefrom. God, the Source and Essence of his life, leaves him free to experiment with all the laws of his nature. When a man makes a law which he decides is good, the good is such in view of his purpose, in view of the object desired. And the divine-life within impresses the consciousness with the thought of error when he does those things which are contrary to his own law, the law under which he is working for the accomplishing of his purpose. For good is that which does good in view of a purpose. Conscience admonishes in accordance with these facts so that the man is able to centralize all his powers in whatever direction he chooses.

But if the law man makes is not in harmony with the Divine Purpose, with the trend of universal creation, he not only meets many difficulties in his way, but at the end he will find that he has built his house upon the sand, that he has built a structure that must be destroyed. Thus while God, the Source of life, serves man's will faithfully, yet at the same time man himself is made responsible for the result of every act. By this means man is made conscious of his true need and awakened to an eager pursuit of knowledge.

By reason of the great diversity of human life, there is necessarily a great diversity of individual conception of truth, but nevertheless there are general laws which all thinking intelligences can recognize and do recognize when presented in an orderly form; and these laws furnish a foundation for correct reasoning.

The apostle states that "all men are members of one body and that each is a member in particular." That each man does represent a function of the human organism is undoubtedly a truth, a truth, in accordance with which, when the great foundation principles of true knowledge are presented and accepted, every one will take up some specific line of activity according to his function in the grand body, and will carry out some particular phase of truth peculiar to his own mental formation. Nevertheless, it will be truth because it is based upon demonstrable facts, facts that underlie all truth. Thus it will take all members of the body of humanity to grasp, comprehend, and ultimate all truth.

But surely we have reached a stage of development when the fundamental, the underlying facts we are presenting, may be known and made the corner-stone of the grand temple of knowledge. We therefore hope that this little volume may aid in bringing to the mind of the reader great general facts, or even that it may suggest the necessity of the knowledge of such facts.

CHAPTER 5. EVOLUTION

There are many difficulties in the way of the universal acceptance of evolution as an established fact, as an obvious law of nature; and, at the foundation of these difficulties, is the Christian belief, which underlies our civilization.

The Christian world has believed it to be a literal fact that in six days God created the world and everything in it, and then ceased from the work of creation. Recently, however, there has been such an accumulation of evidence disproving this statement that the majority of thinkers are rejecting the old form of belief, and it is now generally accepted that, in place of six days, we must understand six periods of time—cycles. This is in accord with the words of the Christ who, when he was rebuked for working on the Sabbath day, replied, "My Father worketh even until now, and I work." (John v. 17.)

If God had not ceased from his work at the time of Christ, we have no reason to think that he has ceased at the present time. On the contrary, we see progression all around us, in every department of life. If a nation ceases to progress—renew its life and constantly unfold higher characteristics—it soon perishes and passes away, and the individual is subject to the same law. We have but to look back fifty years to see the marked progress, not only in science, art, and mechanics, but in the actual brain-power and organic quality of the people.

Another difficulty in the way of accepting the theory of evolution is, that the work of archaeologists has revealed indications of a high state of civilization which antedates history. It has been urged—and we think reasonably—that there are evidences of an early civilization more advanced than our own. We should remember that there are a few isolated cases in which even the American Indian has obtained knowledge of certain things that we do not possess, and certainly more should be expected of old nations that had reached a comparatively high state of civilization.

RACIAL EVOLUTION

It has been said, and it is a historic fact, that "the star of empire westward takes its course." We have before us to-day the great, old nation of China, embodying the civilization of a remote period. Next, in order of time and place, come India, Egypt and the countries east of the Mediterranean—Palestine—where our Lord gave the revelation of the Christian religion. This religion has traveled westward over the continent of Europe until it has reached the Atlantic coast, and has crossed to America, where its light shines from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the dawn of which is beginning to break over China and India.

Again, civilization in its nature is cumulative; like the winding of a thread upon a ball, as in a sense, it overlaps itself, it buries beneath the surface the old, only that it may establish the new upon ever higher ground.

When we look for an immediate cause for the successive rise and decadence of nations and their civilization, we find that each nation, having reached in its turn a comparatively high state of development, probably as high as it was capable of reaching, was overcome and destroyed by nations less advanced than itself. For history makes the fact clear that, as man ascends in the scale of development he sees the folly of war, combat, and struggle. He tires of struggling and arranges an order of peace, and thus soon loses the ability to protect himself, when the lower races come in and. destroy him.

We also find that the civilization of a nation has been led out always by some special principle. In the case of the Greeks it was the love of beauty and the perfection of physical manhood. We may say that art was the center of their civilization.

With the Romans it was conquest and love of power, which degenerated into self-indulgence and oppression, until finally they lost their power and fell.

The center around which the civilization of Egypt gathered, was magic, the laws of nature, the psychic forces in the human family.

Thus, could we possess the history in detail of every nation that has risen and fallen, we should find that, like vegetable life, each possessed its own specific quality. Each grew and matured a special quality of mind which, like the husk of the grain of wheat, enveloped some great truth, and when maturity came and its work was accomplished, the nation passed away as a form of vegetable life that had borne its ripe fruitage.

However, we find that the civilization of the present age has reached a point where science and mechanics have obliterated space and, in a sense, time. The whole world, the ancient and the modern, is rapidly being spread before the public gaze, and our race of to-day is eagerly gathering all the grains of wheat, the great central truths that have matured in the mind of civilizations from earliest times throughout its successive stages to the present. Libraries, so ancient that history has no record of the people that made them, are now being unearthed. Nations, so far removed in the dim twilight of the past that we have no means of knowing the time of their existence, are now presenting the very details of their domestic life to our scrutiny. All these things demonstrate the fact that the race has now reached a state of development where it feels the need of, and consequently is about to gather, the ripe fruitage of all ages.

The race is delving into the quarries of the present and of the past, that, from the work of the hewers of all nations and all times, it may construct a temple of knowledge transcending Solomon's in all its glory, transcending anything that has ever existed upon the planet.

While the accumulating of knowledge has been going on so rapidly during the last century, the mind of the scientist has been intently fixed upon material manifestation. He has searched wisely and diligently for causation in every physical direction, until he has reached the last residuum of matter, a mere "point of force," and he can go no further until he recognizes the source and nature of this force.

As there are small cycles of national development and race development, so there are great cycles of world development—planetary cycles. If we had a history of the Grand Cycle preceding the present one—"the elder world" (ii. Esdras vii. 13), to which there are numerous incidental references in our Bible and of which the sacred books of the East speak so positively, then we should find that, while its people reached a high state of maturity and spirituality, they were a race-round lower than the present humanity.

EVOLUTION OF THE PLANET

Modern scientists run back in the history of the earth to the time supposed to have existed when the planet was nebulous matter floating in space, and there they must stop; for, in following theories relative to the formation of the earth, many of them ignore the idea of a God, a Creator, and say that everything is the outcome of natural law. In the very presence of a disaster like the great earthquake in San Francisco, even the clergy unite in saying that God had nothing to do with it, that it was simply a natural phenomenon. This is as much as to say that God has nothing to do with the affairs of nations or of men, that natural law and the phenomena of nature are all there is. They do not think sufficiently to ask what is meant by natural law.

It is true that everything follows a certain sequence—cause and effect run through everything that we know. But let us trace back a little further. Let us turn the telescope upon space. Way yonder we see a nebulous mass, bright and luminous as a flaming sun, but, as we carefully observe it, we find that we can look through it at some great sun in the far distance, as if the nebula were but a thin veil over the face of the star; thus proving beyond question that this nebulous matter is what has been denominated "luminous gas."

Many theories have been advanced concerning this luminous substance, and many have concluded that it is gas heated to great intensity. At the same time they tell us that it is floating in a medium a hundred, if not a thousand times colder than the temperature at the north pole. But no one has attempted to tell us why this luminous gas interpenetrated by and floating in such cold can remain heated to the intensity claimed. They may philosophize and try to explain how it is possible for intense heat to be retained when interpenetrated and surrounded by intense cold, but the fact remains that nothing that is known to man makes it possible for a cloud of gas to remain heated for one second in a medium so contrary to heat—to say nothing of the untold years that it is supposed to have remained in this state.

In order to account for its luminosity under such conditions, we must look for something beyond the experience of every-day life. The recent discovery of radium, however, evinces the fact that it is possible for an element of nature to remain in a luminous state, and actually heated to a certain. degree, which even the cold of liquid air cannot extinguish. Is this new-found element on the borderline between Spirit and the natural world? If we interrogate the Bible, we find there numerous accounts of visitations from the spirit-world, sometimes in a flame of fire, as God appeared to Moses in a burning bush, and the bush was not consumed. At other times, the person of the visitant was said to be as shining as the light, or as bright as the sun. When a Holy One from the spirit-world enters a man's presence, though it be in the darkness of the night, in the darkest room, the darkness is at once dissipated and all is bright and luminous. The luminous brightness is not seen merely with the spiritual eye but with the natural eye as well. We read that God is Spirit and dwells in the light that no man can approach. Again, the assertion is emphatic that by the word of God the worlds were made, and surely we cannot believe that God created something from nothing, therefore God created from himself. And this nebulous matter of which worlds are formed is the substance of spirit, a substance which is the emanation of a thought of Divinity.

We think, form conclusions, and when the conclusions are reached we express them in words and acts. When we say that we express them, we mean that there goes out from us the thought-form. In like manner, when, in connection with the other creative words, the Elohim said, "Let us make man," the thought was formed in the mind and sent out into space. The substance of his own great nature appeared luminous and bright—as the body of an angel—which scientists call "cosmic gas." As this cosmic gas was a thought of Divinity, its mind-power became what is known as the laws of nature, and, in the aeons of time, formed our earth, and has carried forward evolutionary development of individual organisms, step by step, to the present time.

Here we are met by two apparent discrepancies:

First, that Spirit is invisible to man. Second, that planets are born from their parent suns.

Both of these objections resolve themselves into one, and in reply it may be said that, if God created the world and what is in it from himself, and if God is Spirit, then all that is must be a condition of Spirit. Man, the product of that Creative Mind, is able to recognize through the five senses that only which is upon a plane similar to his own. Therefore, as the Spirit appears to us in the creation of worlds, it first manifests itself as light, and also as heat, because of the intensity of its vibration. Thus it is in this form that the word of God appears in the very beginnings of material substance.

In regard to the second objection—that God cannot be the creator of worlds if they are born from their parent suns—it may be further suggested that, if God is the Producer of all things, the Life and Substance of all substance, the Soul of all souls, then wherever God works there is form and function. Worlds and suns are in form, and their inhabitants that have become the embodiment of Spirit, the Elohim, are his function. God works in man and woman in the creation of offspring, and should we deny that he is working in the creation of worlds through their parent suns?

JOINT EVOLUTION OF PLANET AND RACE

The purpose in the creation of the planet, as announced in the account of Genesis, was to make man in his image and like God. If, therefore, this was the purpose in the thought—the word, which became the creative law in all nature—then it is obvious that all things must move together toward the accomplishing of the one definite object. Even the old philosopher, Plato, saw the image of the thought of Divinity, as a man stretched in the heavens. And to-day it is a demonstrated fact that the tendency of all creation, of all growth and development, is toward man.

This being so, we see man, the most perfect manifestation of creative law, a conscious, thinking, voluntary existence. The religionist says that man is a special creation. Science says that man is the product of the creative laws of the earth. Both are right, for although we read in the revelation that God said "Let us make man," and that he made man, yet this was in connection with, and a part of, the creative words from which the worlds were made. (See Genesis i.)

Man is a special creation because he is the special purpose and the result of all creative law. The apostle said, "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only so, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Romans viii. 22, 23). Yes, truly, the whole creation travaileth, and this travail of nature is to bring forth man. The spirit of life in the grass to-day will be the man that will walk the planet in the far-off to-morrow. But the fact is not changed—man was created by the thought of God, and so was the world, and the two are conjoined as one.

There is within man an instinctive recognition of his Source and destiny. The tendencies of his unbiased nature are toward God and his likeness. It has been closely observed and well said that, from his incipient stages of development, man has been a religious being. A race of savages scarcely has been found so low in development that they have not had some form of religious worship or recognition of God, the Source of their being.

At the present time, however, as a result of his selfishness, self-gratification and intellectual egotism, man has so completely turned his back upon God and divine law that he has begun to repel the very fountain from which he derives his life. The effects of this discordant condition of man and his repellent attitude toward the Source of his life are obvious. He, being the ultimate of planetary law, is in position to dominate all nature, for the declared purpose was "Let them have dominion over all the earth." From a physical standpoint, the dominion of man over the earth is even now being recognized, but the materialistic tendencies of the race have prevented a recognition of the fact that the passions, emotions, desires, together with the loves and hates of the people, are a controlling principle producing its effect throughout creative manifestation.

Man is the mind-center of the planet and his body is one with the earth elements, joined to them by the mental currents that formed all things, therefore, as the bodies of the race have become diseased through perversion, disease and disturbance have entered also into the very life-currents of the earth. And we may reasonably expect volcanic eruptions; earthquakes, producing great destruction; fires, becoming fiends, refusing to be quenched by ordinary methods; storms and cyclones. We may expect the earth to manifest the same conditions that our own bodies manifest when suffering from different phases of what we call disease; and if this should continue the very condition of the planet will cause death—dissolution.

If the perversion of man's nature diseases and destroys the planet, the reverse must be also true; that is, divine order and harmony manifested in the individual are a saving power to the earth. Our Lord recognized this law when he said to his followers, "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men." (Mat. v. 13.)

We are told in the Revelation of Jesus Christ, sent to John on Patmos, that there are to be 144,000 of the first ripe fruit of the earth, who are to be gathered and brought into perfect oneness and harmony with God, and to be made priests and kings unto God and reign on the earth. As the Spirit said to Obadiah, "And saviors shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be Yahveh's.

History, Science, and Revelation point down to a time—the present time, or the near future—when, notwithstanding the fact that man has forgotten God, notwithstanding the diseased state of the planet, the upheavals and the destruction of life and property, which will almost depopulate the earth, there will be a saving power in a people. And this people, by the power of unity with the mind of God, the Producer of all things, will hold the earth as a vital-center, preserve its life, heal it of all disease, rejuvenate it, and repopulate it with a higher race of men. As Jesus was the great healer of all manner of disease, so this body of 144,000 will become the great healers, not only of the interior natures of the people, but of their physical bodies, and of the spirit of the life of the planet.

From the foregoing presentation of the ultimate toward which the life of the planet tends—that is, to bring into manifestation a Godlike manhood which is to dominate the earth—it becomes evident that a slow growth and unfoldment, evolution, has been the process of nature from the beginning of the world to the present time. If this were not true the following and many similar questions which arise in the mind of the reasonable thinker would remain unanswerable; namely:

If there is a God, why does he permit so much anxiety, labor, and sorrow to exist in the world? If there is to be a future existence, a paradise of joy and peace, why the necessity of these thousands of generations being doomed to sorrow and death? Why did not God in the beginning make man perfect, and place him in that paradise; and endow him with wisdom, knowledge and understanding, so that he could not fall and plunge the race into misery for all these centuries? Why was not this kingdom of righteousness, spoken of in the Revelation of Jesus Christ—commonly called The Apocalyptic Vision—ultimated in the beginning?

The only answer to such questions is that knowledge in its very nature is experience. Every father and mother knows, that before their sons are fitted to go out to meet the world, they must have knowledge gained from experience. The Christ announced that knowledge of the truth was to be the savior (John viii. 32); and knowledge can come into existence and form, only through multifarious experiences in many lives.

The present exposition of the object and processes of evolution has been as condensed as possible—merely suggestive of the several lines of thought and investigation connected therewith. But, we think, it is sufficient to make clear the fact that the very spirit of the life of the planet has in it a purpose, an object, and all manifestation of life, all activity, has moved steadily toward the ultimating of that purpose; namely, to bring into existence a. Godlike humanity—Emanuel, God with us, God manifest in the flesh—angel men, sons of God.

When we say "angel men" or "sons of God" the words are practically meaningless from the world's present understanding of God and his angels. It is therefore necessary to take a general view of the scientific knowledge of the universe and of the revelation given to men of God and his angels, so that the reader will bear with me if I seem to diverge from the general thought of this work and to examine into the material universe, its cause, its scope and immensity, its origin and quality, into the nature of God, the soul of the universe, his manifestation in organic form, as well as the object of our existence and the ultimate toward which we with all nature are being led.

CHAPTER 6. OTHER WORLDS THAN OURS

A subject of so vast proportions as the title of this chapter indicates, naturally suggests exhaustive study of the investigations of scientists, ancient and modern; but for the sake of brevity, and because the conclusions of ancient philosophy are not accepted in our time, we omit its consideration and confine ourselves to an examination of a small portion of modern investigation.

The unity of opinion, however, on the part of our modern scientists and the fact that their investigations are accessible to every one, make it unnecessary to quote from them, more than just enough to show that the truths we are about to present are in trend with the scientific mind of the day.

It seems that the only objection science has to offer to the theory that the planets are inhabited is that the conditions existing upon them make life, as we know it, impossible. They object that upon certain of the planets, and especially upon the sun, there is an absence of the conditions that make life possible upon our own earth. But what do we mean by the terms life, living matter, and so on? In their investigations, physicists have reached the point where matter is reduced to a mere center of force, and where heat is only the rate of speed of motion in matter. In the light of these facts, can the line between living and non-living matter be drawn? It has never been drawn, and we are prepared to say that it never will be.

Professor Bose in his book entitled "Response in the Living and Non-Living," claims to have scientifically demonstrated that there is no essential difference between animal, vegetable, or mineral life. He shows also that metals, like the animal organism, can be put to sleep, poisoned, revived, and finally killed.

Thus we are forced to the conclusion that what we call matter is a living organism.

It should be remembered that iron is purified by fire, as in fact are all the metals. It does not kill the life of iron or steel to put it into the furnace and melt it, on the contrary, it seems to bring it into a condition where the life-qualities are more perfectly manifested. And our earth, science tells us, has come from a state of incandescence. Intense heat has prepared it to bring forth living organisms. Yes, more—the heat is absolutely essential to the perpetuation of these organisms.

It is true that our own life requires what we call a moderate amount of heat, but it is well known that there are microbes that subjected to a very intense heat still live. If life in its diminutive forms exists under such conditions, may not the same possibility for life exist in more highly organized forms? May there not be organisms of intelligence, great and mighty minds, whose natural element is a heat transcending our imagination?

The Biblical account states that the three Hebrew children were thrown into a furnace heated seven times hotter than it was wont, that Nebuchadnezzar looking in saw a fourth form like unto a son of man, and that the three Hebrews came out unharmed. The Bible also declares that God is a "consuming fire;" and while such quotations may have no scientific bearing, they at least show that Revelation seeks to impress upon our minds not only that the cause of all life and being is fire, but that fire in itself is more like God than anything else that we know.

This is in harmony with the scientific conclusion that every substance originated in fire—the incandescent gas from which worlds were made—and may not the Christ have announced a law when he said, "I came out from God, and I return to God"? If the planets came out from fire, may they not return to fire? If God, the Source of all mind, of all life, of all action—in short, of all there is—is a consuming fire and if the highest angels that the earth's inhabitants have ever seen appear as flaming fire, is it not reasonable to believe that those blazing suns that illuminate the heavens are the abodes of high and holy beings whose very substance is a flame of fire.

When we say their very substance is a "flame of fire," do not allow your mind to think of fire from the standpoint of a child. Science has demonstrated that fire is nothing more or less than what is called matter in great activity, the atoms of which are in violent vibration, and there are evidences in human life that the higher the organism the more rapid are the vibrations of the life-currents in the organism. So that if we allow our reason full scope in connection with what has already been accepted as Divine Revelation and as the truths of science, we may believe, with good reason, that all the heavenly bodies are inhabited.

While inquiring into the facts relative to the universe, the reader should remember that the search is not merely for the wonderful, but for the purpose of confirming and enlarging our conception of God. The answer to the question:

ARE THE PLANETS AND SUNS INHABITED?

that naturally arises in the mind, necessarily reveals the wonders and greatness of the mind, the consciousness, the intelligence that we call Spirit, God, the Cause of all things.

Astronomers, in their investigation of the solar system, perceive that the larger planets lying beyond our own are less dense and, to a certain degree, self-luminous, and they inquire, "Is it Possible for life to exist upon these worlds?" Such a question can be answered only by logical deduction.

The best intellects will say, "If we have to consider these things at all, we must search for the most logical hypotheses, and there wait until evidences multiply to assure us of their correctness or incorrectness."

In the absence of inspiration, if men cannot trust their reason, there is nothing that they can trust; therefore, very little is accepted as fact in regard to the systems of the universe. In order to reach conclusions by means of the reason, we must first examine facts upon our own planet and from these facts draw inferences as to what exists upon other worlds.

Turning our attention to our own world and traversing the extreme north among icebergs and perpetual snows, we find there the Eskimos and many forms of animal life; going to the hottest part of our globe we find that inhabited; in fact we find no place too hot, no place too cold, no place too barren—in short, no conditions existing on our globe which make life impossible.

Furthermore, the geologist has been able to turn a few pages of Nature's past history, and he has discovered the remains of weird and strange creatures—indeed it is impossible to picture the great diversity of vegetable and animal life which has been found to exist on this globe—life which it would be unable to support under the present terrestial conditions. He has been able to turn pages that extend over millions of years; but he has found no period that does not give evidence of life.

Finally, it has been proved that the earth itself is a body of life, its very substance is life. Sometime we shall know that there is no such thing as dead matter, that all is mind, spirit, or soul-substance.

We believe that the majority of those who have studied our system and the universe in general, agree with the astronomer Proctor in "Other Worlds Than Ours" when he says, concerning the habitability of planets and systems of worlds:

“I have already spoken of the conclusions to be drawn from the existence of the same materials in the substance of the sun that exist around us on this earth. I have shown that we are compelled to regard this general resemblance of structure as sufficient to prove that the other planets resemble the earth, since we have no reason to believe that our earth bears an exceptionally close resemblance to the sun as respects the elements of which she is composed.

“Since, then, we have reason to believe that all the planets which circle around the sun are constituted of the same materials which exist in his substance, though these materials are not necessarily nor probably combined in the same proportions throughout the solar system, we have every reason which analogy can give us for believing that the planets circling around Betelgeux or Aldebaran are constituted of the same materials which exist in the substance of their central luminary.

“Thus we are led to a number of interesting conclusions even respecting orbs which no telescope that man can construct is likely to reveal to his scrutiny. The existence of such elements as sodium or calcium in those other worlds suggests the probable existence of the familiar compounds of these metals—soda, salt, lime, and so on. Again, the existence of iron and other metals of the same class carries our minds to the various useful purposes which these metals are made to subserve on the earth. We are at once invited to recognize that the orbs circling around those distant suns are not meant merely to be the abode of life, but that intelligent creatures, capable of applying these metals to useful purposes, must exist in those worlds. We need not conclude, indeed, that at the present moment every one of those worlds is peopled with intelligent beings, because we have good reason for believing that throughout an enormous proportion of the time during which our earth has existed as a world no intelligent use has been made of the supplies of metal existing in her substance. But that at some time or other those worlds have been or will be the abode of intelligent creatures seems to be a conclusion very fairly deducible from what we now know of their probable structure.   *   *   *

“Thus the fact, that the stars send forth heat to the worlds which circle around them, suggests at once the thought that on those worlds there must exist vegetable and animal forms of life; that natural phenomena, such as we are familiar with as due to the solar heat, must be produced in those worlds by the heat of their central sun; and that works such as those which man undertakes on earthworks in which intelligent creatures use Nature's powers to master Nature to their purposes—must go on in the worlds which circle around Aldebaran and Betelgeux, around Vega, Capella, and the blazing Sirius.”

Professor Proctor's reasoning here is good so far as it goes, and we believe meets with general approval. His reasoning, that the fact that these instrumentalities of use exist is in itself an evidence that there are intelligences to use them, is good, because all who have given thought to Nature's methods see that use determines all qualities, whether good or evil, and that nothing exists in this world that has not a use; and if there is an intelligent Creator it certainly would impeach his intelligence—it even impeaches the intelligence of a man—to be constantly producing useless things; only an idiot would sit and work continuously when no object or use could be accomplished.

When an intelligent man is employed in work he seeks to serve a use. Is God less intelligent than man? Has he created millions, untold millions of worlds and systems of worlds, that have no use? Can we imagine that these untold millions of worlds exist only to beautify our little grain of sand? Such thoughts are unworthy of intelligent beings.

No doubt the present theory—that the sun is an incandescent mass, because the solar rays on striking the earth generate heat—is destined soon to be superceded by one more worthy of the intelligence of our day. Professor Proctor says:

"We know that the sun is the sole source whence light and heat are plentifully supplied to the worlds that circle around him. The question immediately suggests itself: Whence does the sun derive those amazing stores from whence he is continually supplying his dependent worlds? We know that, were the sun a mass of burning matter, he would be consumed in a few thousand years. We know that were he simply a heated body, radiating heat and light continually into space, he would in like manner have exhausted all his energies in a few thousand years—a mere day in the history of his system. Whence, then, comes the enormous supply of force which he has afforded for millions on millions of years, and which also our reason tells us he will continue to afford while the worlds which circle around him have need of it—in other words, for countless ages yet to come?"

The recent discovery of radium has already suggested to many astronomers, that our sun and all the suns of the universe, may be luminous from another cause than fire—as fire is generally known—that there is a light that has the appearance of fire, like the burning bush that burned, but was not consumed, which Moses saw when he was commissioned to deliver Israel from bondage.

That which is called fire has been a mystery through all time, and is as much a mystery to-day as it was in the days of the fire worshipers, yea, more of a mystery to-day, for the child-race lived so near to nature that the thought formed in its brain was by virtue of the Universal Mind, and came nearer the truth, in many respects, than the mind that has shut itself against everything that cannot be demonstrated in the physical.

When our philosophers have fully accepted the fact that the so-called blazing suns are not blazing with consuming fire, but with an illuminating property which perhaps will always be beyond the power of the deepest research to fathom, then their theories will be reversed. Revelation says that "God is a consuming fire," so that until they are able to comprehend something of God, they can never fully comprehend the cause of light.

We repeat, when philosophers are able to grasp this thought they will find that in reasoning from analogy concerning nature's methods they will need make no leaps. Evolution is generally accepted as the universal law. It is certainly the law of all things that we know on earth. Gradual development seems to characterize everything that exists. It is said that, "Every generation becomes weaker and wiser." As mind develops in the man the physical strength and avoirdupois lessen.

Everything points to the truth of the statement in Revelation that all growth—evolutionary processes—is carrying "the whole creation" onward and upward toward the likeness of its Cause, and if the first Cause of all things is Spirit, and the tendency of all things is toward Spirit, then it follows that the avoirdupois, the density of substance, must decrease, as, not man only, but worlds go on in their process of refinement and spiritualization.

There is a marked difference between the organisms of the lower races and the organisms of the higher; and we know too that there is a marked difference in the light that shines from the face of one of a highly intellectual organism—especially when the mind is clear and active and everything in the body is at its best—and in the light from the face of a lower type. A natural light shines forth from a highly spiritualized face, a light that is not imaginary but real, a light that anybody that is in the habit of observing can see even from a distance.

Some years ago I called on a friend who, on my arrival, was not at home, but soon after he came in and stepped from the hall into the back parlor. I was sitting in the front parlor by the window and, as he looked in while taking off his overcoat, I said to his wife: "What is the matter with Mr. B?" She inquired why I asked, and I replied; "His face is so dark." She then informed me that he had been out on business in which there was much trouble and anxiety. All this had cast over his face a shadow, a darkness so marked that it could be seen the length of the room. Probably all who are observant have noticed that a condition of anxiety or disappointment throws a shadow over the face, making the countenance actually shadowy and dark.

If, then, in ordinary life, a state of mind illuminates or darkens the countenance—and many readers will bear witness to this statement—is not this fact at least a suggestion that the more highly developed the soul, the greater the luminosity that emanates from the body?

We are told many times in sacred history that celestial visitants were shining as the light, in some cases so bright that they could not be looked upon. Development means the increasing and the intensifying of the life energy, which beyond a certain point reaches luminosity. The fact that development and spiritualization are always accompanied by illumination has been accepted by all spiritually developed men, and by those who know something of mature souls that have passed into the spirit-world; and from the evidence that we have been able to gather we have come to the conclusion that as worlds age and develop, they, as well as their inhabitants, become more spiritualized and luminous.

We reason that there can be nothing born, nothing come into manifestation without a parent, let it be plant, animal, or man. In continuing the analogy we are forced to the conclusion that there is a parental source for every world, and if worlds have a parentage, then we necessarily reject the "Nebular Hypothesis" so far as it relates to the formation of worlds independent of the sun around which they revolve. If worlds form from nebulæ in space without any parental agency, then we conclude that life may be born on our planet without the agency of parentage; in fact we are left open to accept almost any theory. It is not so unreasonable to suppose that a mother could bring forth a child without a father as to believe that a world can be formed without a father or a mother.

On the other hand, it is evident that worlds are ruled by the same law that governs individuals, that our sun has brought fourth and thrown into space a system of worlds, and that some of these worlds have begun to have a family of their own. It is not known if the younger planets—that is, Venus and Mercury—have moons. But Earth has one child, the moon; Mars has two; Jupiter, seven; and Saturn, ten. So we conclude that as worlds are born from their parent-suns they are less in size, denser, and more opaque, and need the more direct rays of their parent-sun for growth and maturity. But as ages roll on, these worlds grow and become more self-existent, more refined and luminous, and organize for themselves a family of worlds, shedding their light upon their children's life.

Thus is carried forward the work of birth and development in all systems of suns and worlds, and if it is a law that the progress of every world is from density and opacity to refinement and luminosity, then the astronomical observations that many of the suns floating in space are less dense than our sun, and that the outermost planets of our solar system are less dense than the inner planets, are undoubtedly correct and substantiate our conclusion.

We believe it is generally accepted that light is due to a certain speed of electric vibrations. We have been led to say that light is life in motion, and light on one plane of existence is darkness to another.

For instance, we have animals and birds on our planet at the present time that evidently never saw the sun. The light of the sun to them is darkness. A good illustration of this is the owl. The owl may be sitting upon a fence or the limb of a tree and if the sun is shining brightly you may approach him and he is apparently blind, but as the shadows begin to deepen he begins to see a little, and when total darkness reigns he sees plainly. This is not only true of the owl but of many insects, birds and animals.

This is at least a suggestion of the following general law; namely, that when a world is born from its central sun it receives its light and heat from that center and that it cannot even see light emanating from a higher center, nor feel the heat from a higher center, for the vibrations of that higher center cannot touch it. We believe that if there are inhabitants on our moon that the earth would be to them a sun and that they would have no consciousness of our sun.

The same would be true of all the satellites of Mars, Jupiter, and the other planets. We see the sun and feel its light and are dependent upon its emanating life for our existence, because it is our parent, and we believe that when the inhabitants of the earth have developed to a higher plane of existence they will begin to see shining worlds in space that now are entirely invisible to us; suns and systems so glorious and bright, so refined and ethereal that their emanations do not touch anything that belongs to us and therefore we know nothing of their existence. So that there may be suns immensely greater and brighter than our sun even nearer to us than our sun and yet we know nothing about them.

Again we quote from Professor Proctor's book entitled "Other Worlds Than Ours:"

“Or if we estimate Jupiter rather by the forces inherent in his system, if we contemplate the enormous rapidity with which his vast bulk whirls round upon his axis, or trace the stately motion with which he sweeps onward on his orbit, or measure the influences by which he sways his noble family of satellites, we are equally impressed with the feeling that here we have the prince of all the planets, the orb which, of all others in the solar scheme, suggests to us conceptions of the noblest forms of life. The very symmetry and perfection of the system which circles around Jupiter have led many to believe that he must be inhabited by races superior in intelligence to any which people our earth. The motions of these bodies afford indeed to our astronomers a noble subject of study.”

If the course of all worlds, as well as the course of their inhabitants, is from the grosser to the finer, then the inevitable conclusion is, that the sun, our parent world, must be a planet in a state of development so far beyond, so much more spiritualized than our world, that its light is spiritual fire, and if our central luminary has been born from another world, we may expect that the parent of our sun is as much beyond our sun in luminosity, refinement and spirituality, as our sun is more luminous than our earth. Following the same analogy leads us to say that the parent of our sun must have a parent from which it was born and that it is also transcendently more refined and spiritualized than its child. If worlds are born from their parents and become luminous suns, their density decreasing, or, in other words, if they become more refined, then, by an ever increasing ratio we may trace on, on, infinitely on, from child to parent in world-life, until worlds become so refined and attenuated that they are, so far as we are able to discern, immaterial.

It also follows from the mutual relation of a planet and its people that, as those luminous worlds unfold and develop, so their inhabitants unfold and develop, becoming together more refined and luminous; and as this refinement and spiritualization is the law of growth, there necessarily is a point where these immense worlds, with their inhabitants, become invisible—even spirit-substance to our comprehension.

And if worlds have existed from all eternity, then it necessarily follows that all space thruout the immensity of the universe is filled and inter-filled with worlds and systems of worlds, each governed by its own law, and each becoming higher, and still higher, more spiritual, and yet more spiritual, fine and etherial, so that our solar system may be floating through a body of immense worlds, so refined, so spiritualized, that we have no consciousness of their presence, nor they of ours.

Thus the manifestations of God, Spirit, are without limit, as to extent and planes of existence. Here our finite thought ends, but we see that there is no place where there is not an expression of God, a body formed by that Spirit that is omnipresent, who is the formless mind and will of all universes: formless, yet forming all things; expressionless, yet organizing forms to become the expression of his own great mind; and thus we find ourselves thinking of God, Spirit, Formless-Substance, continually forming and expressing himself through the forms that he has made.

ADDENDUM.

We quote from the Literary Digest (N. Y. Nov. 10, 1906) the following excerpts from the work of Prof. Kirschmann and comments, as they furnish interesting thought on the line of the foregoing chapter.

"LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS."

"The probability, or even the possibility, of life in other worlds than our own is denied by the veteran English scientist, Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, in his book on "Man's Place In The Universe." This opinion is vigorously combated in a pamphlet reprinted from the Transactions of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (Toronto, 1906), by Dr. A. Kirschmann, professor of philosophy in the University of Toronto. Space forbids allusion to all of Dr. Kirschmann's arguments, but he makes, in particular, an ingenious use of the hypothesis of the relativity of things, which is worthy of notice. To the relativity of magnitudes, for instance, he will admit absolutely no limit, and he therefore maintains the possibility of living beings so huge that every molecule of their bodies is as great as our solar system, or so small that countless hosts of them may dwell together on one of our molecules. 'Perhaps,' he says, 'the whole galactic system is nothing but one cell of an immense organism.' To one who holds this view of matter and life, argument designed to show that there are no human beings on Venus or Mars, are evidently inadequate. Says Professor Kirschmann:

“We must not forget that the greatness of the universe known to us is only relative. The law of relativity of all magnitudes is not a speculation, but a fact which is given with every experience, and which can be verified at any moment. But we have become accustomed to close our eyes to it. There is absolutely nothing great or small in the world; and the mathematical conception, so much indulged in, of the approximation to zero is one of the worst fictions which human intelligence ever invented. There can be no part of substance or of empty space though ever so small, which, regarded from another standpoint, is not a large part of matter or of space. Consequently, a single molecule of chalk with its atoms of calcium and oxygen and carbon—these again consisting of millions of ions, and these again of sub-ions, and so on ad infinitum—may be a whole solar system again with a central body, and planets and satellites, containing life in many forms, but for our measure too small to be ever perceived. And, on the other hand, the whole universe as far as we can fathom it may be only a small aggregation of particles or cells of a greater and higher organism absolutely unfathomable by us.”

“Somewhat similar to this infinity of magnitudes is the infinity of physical conditions which the writer invokes as another argument in favor of the possibility of life in other worlds. The laws of nature, it is true, may be constant thruout all space and all time—though Professor Kirschmann reminds us that even this is not susceptible of proof—but the variation of conditions may still be infinite. We have no reason to believe that life may not be possible under all these variations, for all conditions are relative just as magnitude is. For every change in temperature, in the intensity of gravity, and in the chemical composition of atmospheres, and for every possible combination of these three, there may be a specially adapted organism somewhere. Says the writer:

‘Physically there is no such thing as cold. The transformation of the uniform series of possible physical temperatures from zero to infinite, different only in intensity, into a manifoldness of two antagonistic qualities, heat and cold, with even a changeable zero-point between, is purely physical. If this zero-point can vary for us in the different seasons—or on account of after-effects and contrast—we should assume that it can vary considerably more under other conditions of gravity and pressure. It is said that life could not exist on Jupiter because its surface is still red-hot. But if the zero-point of the sense of temperature of the Jovians is shifted for a few hundred degrees they will have as pleasant a walk on that red surface as we do on the green grass.’

‘After all, the ordinary notions of physical temperature as used in cosmology are rather vague and misleading If temperature consists in time and space relations of the kinetic or dynamic elements of matter, or in changes of those relations, then it is clear that the elements themselves no matter whether they are atoms, centers of force, ions, or electrons, can not have any temperature at all.’

“Even Wallace's contention that life is dependent on the presence of carbon, nitrogen, and water is not admitted by Professor Kirschmann. Under present conditions other elements enter into organic combination, and he sees no reason why the relative importance of these should not be vastly greater in other places and at other times. He would admit, perhaps, the possibility of a man made out of iron, bisulfid of carbon, and chlorin. He says:

‘To say that life is dependent on the prevalence of the four organogens on the surface of a planet is again incorrect. They are only the organogens under the conditions of heat, gravity and pressure as they prevail on our earth. Under other conditions of heat and pressure, other substances, iron, gold, silicon, may play the role of organogens and form compounds with similar characteristics as those very complex and changeable chemical (organic) combinations which respond with partial or complete decomposition to slight stimulation. The neglect of this circumstance is the greatest mistake all those have made who have hitherto written on the subject.’

“To cap the climax, our knowledge of our own relationship to the external world is only relative. Professor Kirschmann says of this:

‘There is one more point which should make us modest with regard to our statements about what is possible in other worlds. We are accustomed to think that we are a part of this world—an item in space and time. But this is a matter of belief, not of knowledge or science. On closer examination we find that what we can say with certainty is that the whole world as we know it is a part of us—of our consciousness. Not that we are in space and time—but space and time are in us. They are the glasses through which alone we can see. We can look through them, but not at them. If we attempt to take them off to look at them, we are totally blind. What they are objectively we do not know. They are the tools with which consciousness works. . . . . Time and space are for us the instruments with which we grasp the world. We have a lease of these instruments, and usually a lease for less than ninety-nine years. Whether with different mental instruments other worlds may be opened to us, whether the evil in this world is real or is only a distortion produced by the inadequacy of the tools or the imperfection of us who handle them, we cannot know in this life. We may discover when the lease runs out.’”

CHAPTER 7. THE IMMENSITY OF THE UNIVERSE

"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him?"

Some little conception, inadequate as it must be, of the wonders of the Universal Spirit, the One God, the Mind and Spirit that rules all things, can be best obtained by making an effort, at least, to think of "The Immensity of the Universe." By this means we may expand our ideals to something like a true conception of the Creator. In doing this let us begin with the known and build from that to the unknown.

We suggest, therefore, that you draw a circle 4 feet, 8 inches in diameter to represent the circumference of the sun. Then using the same scale, place the planets contiguous to each other on the diameter of the circle in the order of their relative sizes. As correctly as can be measured with a carpenter's rule, their diameters are as follows: Mercury, three-sixteenths of an inch, Mars, one-fourth of an inch, Venus, seven-sixteenths of an inch, Earth, one-half of an inch, Uranus, two and one-sixteenth inches, Neptune, two and one-fourth inches, Saturn, four and five-eighth inches, and Jupiter, five and one-half inches. You may approximate the size of the sun, when you perceive that all the planets, placed side by side on its radius, extend but little over half the distance from the circumference of the sun to its center.

You will observe that Jupiter, the giant of our, solar system, contains thirteen hundred times the volume of our earth. We also find Jupiter with a diameter about one-tenth of the sun's diameter. Further comparison shows the sun with a volume 1,300,000 times that of our earth. Yet we think our earth a very large place, do we not?

Leaving the confines of the solar system, we now enter for our comparisons a vaster field—the stellar domain. From a recent article in the Scientific American we copy the following: "Epsilon Aurigae is supposed to be a double star, the smaller of the two is about 350, 000, 000 miles in diameter and the larger one about 850, 000, 000 miles, or about 400 and 1,000 times the sun's diameter." With the scale used in our comparison of the solar system, let us compare Epsilon with the sun. The sun's diameter being 4 feet 8 inches, Epsilon's diameter is 4,600 feet. If we imagine a circle of this size on the ground and lay our little chart upon in, we shall gain but a faint idea of the size of our earth compared with the size of the magnificent sun Epsilon.

In order to comprehend relative size more fully we shall make another comparison: On a large circle representing Epsilon, let a marble one-half an inch in diameter represent the earth. Now, imagine a man on the marble whose size is in the same proportion to the marble as a man is to the earth. Then, on a ball with the same diameter as the circle representing Epsilon, imagine a man whose size is in the same proportion to the ball as a man is to the earth.

Or, again, if a man on the planet Epsilon, whose size is in the same proportion to Epsilon as man is to the earth, should see our large(?) planet he would doubtless need a microscope to discover man upon it.

We make one more comparison. If the Garden of Eden had been on the equator of Epsilon, and Adam on being driven out from Eden, had begun a journey on a fast express train around Epsilon—making the schedule time, usually made between New York and San Francisco, about 3,000 miles in 4 days—and had traveled until now, 6,000 years, it would be nearly 4,000 years before he would reach his starting point; or, in other words, it would take nearly 10,000 years to encircle Epsilon, whereas our globe could be encompassed at the same rate of speed in 33 days.

Sirius, the brightest of the fixed stars, is estimated to be 2,688 times as large as the sun, and recently it was discovered to have a satellite whose bulk is said to be seven times as great as that of our sun.

Again we quote from the Scientific American:

"The head of Taurus is brilliantly lighted by the V-shaped figure called Hyades, whose brightest star of the first magnitude is the celebrated Aldebaran. This star is red and of a deeper hue than Betelgeuse. In actual luminosity it about equals Sirius, but being much farther away appears less brilliant to us. It may be remarked that Rigel [or Beta Orionis], according to Newcomb's estimate, is immensely greater than Sirius and possibly exceeds the sun in light ten thousand times. But its distance is too great to be measured with our present means."

The comparing of these great suns to Earth sinks our earth to the insignificance of a grain of sand. Yet, have we reason to believe that these bodies are the largest among the untold millions of worlds floating in space? We can form no conception of the size of these remote stars, and still less can we form a conception of the space which they occupy, because the space must be in proportion to the bodies occupying it, and because the distances are so much greater than anything with which we have to deal on earth.

In our flight across the vast void, the solar system is left behind as an island in space, and we find that we have traveled 250,000 times the radius of the earth's orbit before we have reached the nearest fixed star, and from it no telescope yet invented could reveal a single one of the planets of our solar system. Stellar distances are so great that even astronomers find it impossible to handle the immense numbers, and consequently use the "light-year" as a unit of measurement, which is the distance that light travels in a year, or about 63,000 times the distance of the earth from the sun.

From terrestrial experiences we have no conception of our distance from the sun, and can form but a faint idea by comparison. Charles A. Young, Professor of astronomy in Princeton University, says that an explosion on the sun would be heard by us about fourteen years after it actually occurred.

For years investigations have been made to discover whether our sun with its system of worlds is not circling around another grander center. Some astronomers imagine that they find evidences indicating that our system is moving in a circular orbit around the star Alcyon of the Pleiades. Others tell us that the solar system is flying through space at the rate of about eleven miles per second toward the constellation Hercules, as the stars comprising that constellation appear to be spreading out, as if we were approaching them.

Again, an examination of the heavens shows the suns grouped together in galaxies, and there are evidences that these are in motion, but the distances are so immense that it is impossible for finite man to obtain positive knowledge of the order of their motion.

Flammarion says:

"To a mind which had the power of abstracting itself from time and space, the earth, the planets, the suns, the stars would seem to be falling like drops of rain from the boundless sky, in every imaginable direction, like rain-drops whirled to and fro in the grasp of some cyclonic tempest and attracted, not by some solid base, but by the attractive force of each other and of them all; each one of these cosmic drops, each of these worlds, these suns, is hurried along at such a rate of speed that the flight of a cannon-ball is mere repose in comparison."

But may not this flying, falling in all directions appear similar to a great number of wheels with arms extended and revolving in the same direction? To one standing at a distance, the arms would appear to be flying "in every imaginable direction"—while some were going east, others would be going west, while some were going up, others would be going down—in apparent confusion, yet at the same time revolving around their centers in perfect order. Such is the order of the solar system with its planets and their satellites and we may reasonably believe that that is the order of the whole universe. That there is an order there can be no doubt, because, if these great bodies flying through space were not governed by law, they would soon be destroyed.

In the whole celestial sphere, the number of stars bright enough to be seen with the naked eye is only from 6,000 to 7,000, whereas, the number visible in the great Lick telescope is probably 100,000,000, and Professor Young makes the remark that it shows stars so faint that it would take more than 30,000 to make a star equal to the faintest that can be seen with the naked eye.

As to the number of these suns and systems, no astronomer can form a conception, for there are millions of suns with their systems within the reach of a powerful telescope. We are told that there are places in the Milky Way where the stars are so numerous that within the field of the telescope they appear so close together and so small that it is impossible to count them; and if within the field of the telescope the number is so great that they cannot be counted, what can we reasonably suppose to be the number comprising our universe?

But if our mind palls in considering the immensity of the universe, yet, we must rally our forces, and, as the angel said to Daniel, "Be strong, yea, be strong," for we have been casting a survey over our own territory only—comparatively, our own door-yard.

We turn the most powerful telescope into space beyond the limit of what is known as our universe, and under its powerful eye, little specks of nebulæ form themselves into universes, remote from ours probably by millions of light-years.

In order to aid the mind in its marvelous flight through endless space, we append here from Flammarion's "Wonders of Science" a few illustrations of the appearance of these far-off universes, which are called nebulæ.

Here is our universe with suns and systems of worlds so remote that it would take tens of thousands of years for a ray of light travelling at the rate of 186,414 miles per second, to reach the earth. Yet it is only one sphere floating in limitless space, and beyond it there are other universes with numberless worlds, and beyond these, others, and so on without limit to space or to numbers of systems of worlds, or of universes. If there is no limit to space, then there is no conceiving the numbers of universes filling space; and here we must stop because of the inability of mind to grasp infinity.[2]

THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE

Pause to think a moment. What has been your ideal of God, the Creator of all these universes and systems of worlds? Is not the thought that has filled the minds of men for ages, that of a God in the form of a man, larger possibly than themselves, seated upon a throne somewhere in the universe, capable of creating and ruling these immense worlds, entirely inadequate? Can the Creator be less than his creation?

All astronomers and philosophers unite in saying that all things in nature are ruled by law, or God; as the poet Pope has said,

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;

That, changed through all, and yet in all the same;

Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame;

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,

Lives through all life, extends through all extent,

Spreads undivided, operates unspent;

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart:

As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,

As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:

To him no high, no low, no great, no small;

He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all."

How great, how incomprehensible, even from the point of view of the physical universe, is our God! From the physical point of view, man upon this little globe becomes, as it were, almost annihilated—a mere animalcule on a grain of sand. Yet we know that man is part of the great whole, part of that all-pervading Spirit.

God is Spirit and God is Love, and that Spirit of Love is flooding all these systems of worlds with his light and his love; loving and preserving all his diminutive children: and Yahveh, the Will of the universe, is our God. "In him we live and move and have our being." With every breath we draw we inhale that divine-life—the fire of God's own supreme nature. As we move through space, the eternal substance of Divinity passes through us as if we were but shadows, and it is only by the regenerate life that we can refine and intensify the currents of our life sufficiently to touch and to know something of the outermost degrees of Divinity.

If, in addition to what we have just said concerning worlds and universes, we accept the probability that universes with their peopled worlds have been in existence from all eternity and are destined to continue to all eternity, and that these people are progressing, just as man is progressing at the present time on our planet, growing in mind, becoming more and more refined and attenuated and spiritualized, what manner of men must exist within the limits of these universes at the present time?

With our meager capacity for thought, if we should imagine for a moment that our sun was once a world like ours, born from a parent and inhabited with a people that have been in the process of evolutionary development all these hundreds of billions of years, would we be capable of grasping the greatness, the grandeur, and the glory of such beings? Would not one of these beings on our sun transcend even our highest imagination of God?

Think of men who have lived and grown and are still living, growing and maturing on the parent-sun of our sun; again, upon its parent, and so on to infinity, and yet, all these are sons of God! With this thought in mind, can you for one moment think of this Almighty God, this wondrous God of the whole universe, and of all universes, as having been once confined, limited, within the personality of a single man?—even the man. Jesus with all his divinity, his grandeur, glory and power! Reason recoils from such a thought.[3]  He was the son of God: yes, in a higher and a holier sense than the church has understood; He said, "I came out from God." Have we not all come out from God? Is God not the Life, the Fountain, from which all life is organized? Is not God the Potentiality that causes the manifestation of law in the universe and in all universes? We ask these questions and allow the reader to answer them.

Again, we ask the learned of our day who attribute all this manifestation to unthinking-force moving in line with "natural law:" Can you conceive the Cause of all these wondrous systems of worlds, the Producer of all the inhabitants of all these numberless universes to be without intelligence? If so, whence came the intelligence, small as it is, that you yourself possess? If you believe yourself to possess intelligence and deprive your Source of the same conscious intelligence, are you not unreasonable?—Certainly you are. You would bring something out of nothing. Yes, the intelligence that you possess is but the merest shadow, the merest point of mind, and its source a thinking, knowing, loving intelligence, nourishing all those millions of systems of worlds and universes and their inhabitants, and organizing centers which are mind-organs to carry forward the work of creating man in his image and likeness.

And after all the research and with all the accumulation of facts regarding the heavens, since the remote time of Job to our own wonderful, present century, we are still able only to exclaim with him, "Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him? the thunder of his power who can understand?"

CHAPTER 8.THE GREAT NAME, YAHVEH

We have seen in preceding chapters that the physicists have searched diligently into the character and nature of matter from a physical standpoint; but in their last analysis, viz., their investigations into the molecule, atom, ion, and electron, and their deductions that, after all, the smallest particles of matter may be only "centers of force," they have invaded the realm of the metaphysical. At this point the physicist stops to look around him for a base, a substantial foundation, to which he may unite his forces with the metaphysician's in pursuit of causation.

If we assume the task to find that base, that center, and herein present it, it will necessitate investigations into that broad field of thought that has been denominated "Revelation," as well as investigations into nature.

We have assumed the existence of God, of an intelligent, creative Mind-power that is able to cause to be, and—as we shall see in following chapters—to bring into existence mind-centers to be the expression of its own nature or, in other words, mind-centers through which this Universal Mind expresses itself.

Theology has gathered around the word "Revelation" so much debris that it is necessary first to clear away the rubbish in order to get at the real meaning. Revelation in its essence means simply an angel-hand placing in a dark and dangerous passage a bright light. From this we assume that there is an angel, an intelligent being, who would cause us to know that which is necessary to be known in order that we may avoid pitfalls and dangerous errors, and that our mind may grow into the Divine Likeness—into the likeness of its Source.

If we were passing through a dark and dangerous passage, and a hand placed there a light, should we, like the moth, be so absorbed in the existence of the light, that we stumble and fall and perhaps destroy ourselves? No, as intelligent beings understanding the use of light, instead of looking at the lamp, we look around us and examine our pathway, and the light reveals to us the condition that surrounds us. This, then, is an illustration of what Revelation is, and all revelation from the beginning of the world down to the present time is nothing more, nothing less, than a light in a dark place. One of the greatest lights that has ever been set in this dark world, is the revelation of the meaning of the great name of God.

Modern usage gives a mere word-sound to represent an object, but in divine order a name expresses quality. In the meaning of the great name of God is the light that illuminates that dark passage between the material world and the world of metaphysics, or the world of mind.

The great name of God was known from the earliest history of man to the time when Moses was called to deliver Israel from Egyptian bondage: but, like the name of the present day, it was to those early people only a word-sound or an appellation referring to a certain deity. But when Moses was commissioned to deliver Israel he was not given the name only, but he was given to know the meaning also, as we shall see further on.

The name Yahveh—translated Jehovah a few times—occurs many times throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and is translated Lord and God. But in order to distinguish this the name of God from the other names of God in the Authorized Version, the translators have nearly always put it in capitals. Concerning the name Yahveh, we give the following references:

"And God said unto Moses, I will be that I will be: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I will be hath sent me unto you." (Exodus iii. 14, Rabbi Leeser's translation.)

"And God said unto Moses, I am that I am [Heb. ehyeh asher ehyeh]; and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you. That this passage is intended to indicate the etymology of Jehovah as understood by the Hebrews, no one has ventured to doubt—it is in fact the key to the whole mystery. But, though it certainly supplies the etymology, the interpretation must be determined from other considerations. Jehovah must be the third person, singular, masculine, future, of the substantive verb hayah to be. We accept Yahveh as the more probable punctuation."—"Dictionary of the Bible," by Dr. William Smith.

"Although we may not be able to give with perfect certainty the literal meaning of this name, yet at least we will no longer designate it by the barbarous form 'Jehovah' (which was produced only three centuries ago through Christian aggravation of a Jewish superstition), but we will restore its real sound Hahve, were it only as a sign that Hebrew antiquity is now springing up among us out of the grave of ages, endowed with fresh life."—Heinrich Ewald.—"History of Israel," translated by Russell Martineau.

"So far as the interests of criticism are concerned all scholars are now agreed. Gesenius and Ewald on the side of Philologists; Hengstenberg, Tholuck, Lutz, etc., on the side of theologians, are united for once. They all agree in giving it the form Yahveh and the future tense, as its literal rendering."—"Yahveh Christ," by Alexander McWhorter.

These quotations show that scholars are to a great extent agreed as to the pronunciation of the name, that some have even discovered its true surface meaning, and that the name relates to the one God, the God of the universe, the all-pervading Spirit. We read in Exodus iii. 13, 14 and 15:

"And Moses said unto God, Behold when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you: and they shall say unto me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

And God said unto Moses, I will be what I will to be: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I will be what I will to be hath sent me unto you.

And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God [Yahveh Elohim] of your Fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name forever and this is my memorial unto all generations."

The fourteenth verse is intended to present to Moses the true signification of the divine name, the name of the all-pervading, all-intelligent God of all the universe, but the words capitalized and translated in the Authorized Version—"I am that I am" are given in the Revised Version of the Old Testament in three different ways, namely, "I am because I am," or, "I am who I am," or "I will be that I will be." The last form is undoubtedly the most nearly correct. Surely, to anybody that accepts the Scriptures as authority, the words, "This is my name forever and this is my memorial unto all generations," are plain enough that this is the name, and the only name, applying to God, and that all other forms are incorrect.

There are many evidences that this name began to be known to other nations about the time of Moses, and in the fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis the name occurs the first time. Then what may we understand as the meaning of the words in Exodus vi. 2 and 3: "And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Yahveh: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty [Heb. El Shaddai], but by my name Yahveh was I not known to them"?

The declaration here that the children of Israel did not know God's name must inevitably imply that while they knew and used the word, they did not know its meaning, nor the fulness of its import, and that this revelation to Moses was a revelation of the true meaning and import of the divine name, for surely a word-sound has no value of itself, and this word-sound it seems was known and used by other people, as well as by Israel.

But when we take the meaning of the word "Yahveh" as "I will be what I will to be," it brings to us a potentiality, a power, all unknown to the world, even at the present time; for the name carries with it the thought that he who spoke the word and caused the world to form and to produce itself by the potency of that Infinite Mind, did so by the power of his will, and when we as creatures of earth muse much upon the signification of that name, the "I will," and the second part of it, "to be what I will to be," or "as I will to be," we get a realization of that unlimited power, and a certainty that there is no power in the world, nay, in the universe, but the power of the will.

Since it is accepted by the Christian world that man is the offspring of the Almighty, it follows that man, being made in the image of God, has attributes similar to those of his Creator, his Father. When man's will has been surrendered, yea, rather has been united to the Divine Will, then man and God become one, for the mind of man is nothing; it has no power of action without the will.

Man always does that which he wills to do, although sometimes there are found in the man two wills active at the same time—the will of the flesh, or the will arising from the impulses, desires, and passions, and a will that arises from the conclusions of the reasoning faculties. But whatever will controls the person, that the person is for the time being; for the will decides all that a person is.

If we accept the statement that each organ of the brain is the seat of a separate faculty, then we may say that all the faculties of the brain are like a congress of persons in conference one with another and that the will, the supreme power, positioned in the center and upper part of the brain, is the king or president, the executor of the decisions of all the faculties.

In the same manner we may say that the Divine Will is King of kings and Lord of lords. It is the potency that holds all worlds and systems of worlds in their places, that governs all life upon them, and that gives direction and potentiality to all forms of existence and to all laws manifested in nature. It is because of this that man in his return to God is taught to pray, "Let thy will be done," or in other words, this prayer means that the desire of the heart must be that the will of the finite become the will of the Infinite.

When man has become absolutely subordinate to the Divine Will, then it will be correct to say of him, as was said of the angel that was sent to Aaron when the children of Israel were about to enter the promised land, "My name is in him," for, as soon as the man unites his will, his desire, and his purpose in life with God, he is one with Him, God's name is in him, God's will is his will, he moves under the potentiality and power of that will, and to all intents and purposes the will becomes the man. In other words, the Infinite Mind and its conclusions, which are the purpose concerning man in the creation of the world, become the will of the man; thus man becomes the manifestation of God—of Yahveh.

As we shall see hereafter, those who were wholly consecrated to God and had reached high attainments in their unity with the Father, were called "Yahveh" by Moses. Jesus, the Christ, said, "I and my Father are one." We know that our Christian brethren thinking upon this without further light have concluded that Christ was one of the triune Godhead. That is true, because God has a threefold manifestation. First, as the Father or Producer of all that is—the Creator. Second, as the Holy Spirit, translated the Holy Ghost, the active agency. Third, as manifested in human form, the son of God. We read of Christ that he was manifest that he might bring many sons unto God.

Again he said in regard to that oneness in his notable prayer: "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." Here Jesus makes it plain that there are not many Gods, but one, but that there are many manifestations of God in the form of his sons.

But as soon as a man becomes truly a son of God, his will becomes one with the Father's will, thus they are no more two, but one. For all there is of life, of existence, of being, is the mind, for God produced all things by a word, viz., a thought formed in the mind, a decision reached and sent out by the force of the will, endowing the thought-form with potentiality capable of working out and bringing into manifestation the thing decided upon.

Jesus was the last messenger who stood before the world as the ultimate embodiment of that creative-word, a finished man, a son of God, a man in whom God was incarnated and through whom he found complete expression, as Christ said, "I can do nothing of myself, the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works." Thus the name of God is the name of the divine attribute or active agency that produced all manifestation and lies beyond, beneath and overrules all action. Here words fail to express fully the deep, comprehensive meaning of that great name, but he that would be wise and strong and godlike should muse much upon the signification of this wondrous name of the God of the universe, Yahveh—the "I will be what I will to be."

We have here endeavored to give a little of the history of that wondrous name and of its relatedness to the active agency in the human organism, but the world is in the habit of looking to authority, and if the authority for a thought, according to its judgment, is found insufficient, the thought is thrown aside as worthless. But we wish to impress upon the reader that the authority for this name in itself amounts to nothing. We have likened revelation to a light, mere authority has no light in it, but the thought embodied in the word-formation is the light.

In carefully examining our own bodies we find that we cannot move a muscle without the consent of the will. We find also that while physiologists discourse very learnedly about the mechanical structure of the voluntary and involuntary muscles of the human organism, yet the real factor is not understood. What physiologist has been able to describe the modus operandi of the mind and the will upon the muscular system? A dead body has no power to use its muscles. Electricians have experimented upon the bodies of men just executed and have been able to cause them to throw the limbs about in a reckless, uncertain manner, but they applied a power outside of and beyond the power of the mind—this power had no knowledge or order to guide it.

Experiment with your own body. Take hold of an object weighing ten, twenty or fifty pounds and lift it by bending your arm. Observe carefully where the power comes from. By careful observation you will find that the power is in the brain, and by still more careful analysis you will find that the power is in the will. We will, and then we act, or we will to act.

Herein is a manifestation of the name of God in our own organism. Whence did we get that will power, that power to act?—From the creative-source, did we not?—Certainly. As we look out into the broad realm of nature we see the noble horse pulling a great load; we see his muscles contract and expand. What power is it that is pulling the load?—Yahveh the will of the universe—this power is one manifestation of the great name. But as we shall consider in succeeding chapters its manifestation in all its wondrous ramifications, we wish here only to impress upon the mind of the reader the force and function of the will, of that revealed power, the I will be what I will to be.

CHAPTER 9. THE MANIFESTATION OF YAHVEH

In the preceding chapter we considered the great name "Yahveh," "I will be what I will to be," from its historic point of view. We will now endeavor to consider it in its manifestation in, and in its relation to mind exhibited in the human organism; and also in its great, general manifestation throughout the known and the unknown universe.

It is manifested in the human organism as will. In the wilt of man resides his only power, and may we not ask: Is there any known power in the whole universe that is not will-power? What means this wondrous activity in everything?—in the small and in the great, in the telescopic and in the microscopic, in what is infinitely beyond the microscopic as well as what is infinitely beyond the telescopic?

We quote the following from Camille Flammarion:

“Thus stars, suns, planets, worlds, comets, shooting stars, aerolites—all the bodies that compose this vast universe, in a word—are resting, not on solid bases, as seemed to be demanded by the primitive and childish conceptions of our ancestors, but on the invisible and immaterial forces which rule and direct their motions. These millions and millions of heavenly bodies are endowed with their respective motions for the sake of stability and are mutually supported by each other across the gulf that separates them

“In fact, the entire cortege is moving, flying, falling, rolling, rushing through space, but at such relative distances that all appear to be at rest. . .

“Now the constitution of the sidereal universe is formed on the same model as that of bodies which we designate as material. All bodies, organic or inorganic, man, animal, plant, stone, iron, bronze, are composed of molecules that are perpetually in motion and never touch. These molecules are themselves composed of atoms which do not touch. Each of these atoms is infinitely small and invisible, not only to the eye, not only to the microscope, but even to the thought, since it is possible that these atoms may be nothing more than centers of force. The calculation has been made that in the head of a pin there are no less than eight sextillions of atoms, or eight thousand times a thousand millions multiplied by a thousand million, and that in a cubic centimeter of air there is a sextillion of molecules. All these atoms, all these molecules, are in motion under the influence of directing forces, and, relatively to their dimensions, are separated from each other by wide distances. We may even believe that there is in principle but one description of atoms, and that it is the number of primitive atoms, essentially simple and homogeneous, their manner of arrangement and their motion which determine the diversity of molecules; a molecule of gold or iron differing from a molecule of sulphur, of oxygen, of hydrogen, etc., only in the number, the disposition and the motion of the primitive atoms of which it is composed; each molecule being a system, a microcosm.

“Whatever idea we may adopt, however, of the essential constitution of bodies, the truth that is recognized to-day and cannot henceforth be contested is, that the motionless point that our imagination has been seeking has no existence anywhere. Archimedes may vainly clamor for a place to stand so that he may move the world. Worlds, like atoms, repose on the invisible, on immaterial force; everything is in motion, solicited by the force of attraction and as if in search of that motionless point which flies from us as we pursue it and which has no existence, since in the infinite the center is everywhere and nowhere. The so-called positivists, who declare with so much assurance that 'Matter alone reigns with its properties,' and who smile with disdain upon the researches of thinking men, should first tell us what they mean by that famous word 'matter.' If they did not stop at the surface of things, if they had any idea that appearances may serve as a cloak for intangible realities, they would doubtless be a little more modest.

“As for ourselves, who seek the truth with no preconceived ideas and unbiased in favor of any system, it seems to us that the essence of matter remains to us as mysterious as the essence of force, the visible universe being something entirely different from the form under which it presents itself to our senses. In fact, this visible universe is composed of invisible atoms; it rests in apparently void space and the forces which guide and direct it are themselves immaterial and invisible. It would be a less daring speculation to affirm that matter has no existence, that all is dynamism, than to pretend to declare the existence of a universe that is exclusively material. As to the material support of the world, it is a sufficiently piquant remark to make that it disappeared at exactly the same time that the science of mechanics gained its victories proclaiming the triumph of the invisible. . . . . the highest effort of our intelligence has for its last resting place, for its supreme reality, the Infinite!"

When Flammarion wrote this it was considered very fanciful, but physicists by experimenting with radio-active substances have discovered many things concerning the atom which less than thirty years ago they were unable to prove by a single scientific experiment.

The atom has always been considered indestructible and indivisible, using Flammarion's language, "too small for thought," but the doctrine of the immutability of the atom, which has held sway for almost two thousand years, has ceased to exist.

Sir Oliver Lodge says:

“. . . . it is noteworthy how very small these electrical particles [particles smaller than atoms, called 'electrons'] are compared with the atoms of matter to which they are attached. If an electron is represented by a sphere an inch in diameter, the diameter of an atom of matter on the same scale is a mile and a half. . . . An atom is not a large thing, but if composed of electrons, the spaces between them are enormous compared with their size—as great relatively as the spaces between the planets in the solar system And it becomes a reasonable hypothesis to surmise that the whole of the atom may be built up of positive and negative electrons interleaved together . . . . The oppositely charged electrons are to be thought of in this hypothesis as flying about inside the atom, as a few thousand specks like full stops [periods] might fly about inside this hall forming a kind of cosmic system under their strong mutual forces, and occupying the otherwise empty region of space which we call the atom—occupying it in the same sense that a few scattered but armed soldiers can occupy a territory—occupying it by forceful activity, not by bodily bulk, or according to Lord Kelvin, ‘rotating with inconceivable velocity.’”

The hypothesis of Flammarion and many other eminent scientists, that "the atom may be nothing but a center of force," seems to have been proved by Professor Rutherford of Montreal. He has shown that the main fact of radio-activity consists in the throwing away with great violence actual atoms of matter, such as may be stopped by a thin sheet of paper; of this Sir Oliver Lodge says:

"Their speed, indeed, far exceeds that of any cannon ball that ever existed, being as much faster than a cannon ball as that is faster than a snail's crawl; a hundred times faster than the fastest flying star, these atomic projectiles constitute the fastest moving matter known There is every reason to believe that a minute scrap of radium, scarcely perceptible to the eye may go on emitting these energetic projectiles for hundreds of years."

And our experience coincides with Sir Oliver's:

"That whatever hypothesis and speculation we may frame, we cannot exceed the reality in genuine wonder; and believe that the simplicity and beauty of the truth concerning even the material universe, when we know it, will be such as to elicit feelings of reverent awe and adoration."

Using a very different process of investigation from what these noted physicists have used, we have reached the same conclusion, namely, that, what we call matter is in reality composed of invisible substance, and what we call the atom is only a tremendous reservoir of energy.

Even as far back as the time of Descartes we find that he "rejected the atomic hypothesis, holding that there could be no vacuum in the universe, and making matter essentially synonymous with extension." The most illustrious of our modern physicists, Lord Kelvin, considers ether as "an elastic solid filling all space."

If the huge cables that hold up the East River bridge in New York are composed of atoms each revolving in its sphere as the planets and suns of the universe, and each atom in itself is a minute solar system comprising a central part, around which a thousand or many more particles revolve, then the questions arise: What is the great strength holding up that mighty structure? What is the power that holds those cables together? What is this apparently "solid substance" composing the bridge? Why do these electrons always hold their orderly positions? What is this invisible ether through which they fly with such inconceivable velocity? To answer, we are thrown back upon the revelation of that great name, namely, the power of the great name—the will, the I will be what I will to be.

The same question may be asked concerning all material substances, but there is no response from modern research but the echoing question—"What is it?"

If we take the Bible Revelation, namely, that God, in the beginning, created the heaven and the earth, and again that God created these things by a word, we then conclude that all is mind, spirit. We know that a "word" is the expression of a thought sent out by the will, endowed with the potentiality of the will. In the creation of the world this Word must have been endowed with the potentiality of the Spirit—the Will, "Yahveh." The Word had the power in itself to make a world make itself; for, from scientific investigation, it has been shown that there is a general trend to the formative-processes in all nature. For example, the tiny seed-germ in the earth has in it the power to gather to itself material to construct a body according to its kind, character, and quality, and this body, like all other bodies, has the power to hold its own structural integrity. The body of man, which is constantly undergoing a material change, still holds its form until the will fails, or is overcome by a stronger force, then death comes.

What is death?—We say it is the absence of life.—Yes.—What is life?—This has been the question of all the ages, and the answer has never been found.—Why?—-Because there is no comparison. Life is, and there is nothing like it. In the Scriptures God said, "I am, and there is none like unto me," and if God, the Soul of the universe, is life, life is, and there is nothing like it; and since we can know the qualities of things only by comparison and there is nothing with which to compare life, it is impossible to answer the question: What is life?

Tennyson realized this truth when he wrote these beautiful lines:

"Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies;—

Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower—but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is."

In trying to answer the question, What is life? we cannot stop with organized life as we know it, for there is abundant evidence that all space and all substance is filled with quivering, dancing, sparkling life. "Inanimate matter," a phrase much used twenty-five years ago, has now given place to "the life of matter." M. Bose, whose ingenious experiments we have before mentioned, has shown that matter reveals more and more the qualities which were formerly attributed to living beings only.

Gustave Le Bon says:

"Physiologists measure, as is well known, the sensitiveness of a being by the degree of excitation necessary in order to obtain from it a reaction. The being is considered very sensitive, when it acts under slight stimuli. Applying similar tests to brute matter we can show that the most rigid substance and the least sensitive in appearance, a bar of metal, for example, is really incredibly sensitive."

We know that when the body dies something leaves it. The materialists say that the life dies, but whom shall we believe, the materialists, who are few in number compared with those who believe in spirit, or the great majority of mankind that believe in the existence of the soul after the dissolution of the body?

"The very scientific materialism of our day," writes Professor Hyslop, in The North American Review, "points definitely to the possibility, or at least the rationality of supposing the possibility, of a future life. . . ."

"Physical science admits the existence of a supersensible world of reality which had not been suspected or proved until within recent years. We may instance Roentgen rays, the various forms of radio-active energy whose whole gamut is not yet known, and the speculations about ions and electrons that take us far beyond the world of Lucretian atoms into the measureless ether, whose properties make it impossible to apply the term 'matter' to it, without removing the antagonism of matter to the spiritual. All these discoveries represent realities quite as supersensible as the Christian conception of the immaterial, and we escape calling them spiritual only because the development of human thought has come to confine the connotation of 'spirit' to implications of consciousness as its necessary and only function. It is this and this alone that prevents us from claiming that the outcome of physical science is the proof of a spiritual world. We have so defined the nature and problem of spirit as implicative of personal consciousness that there can be no proof of its reality apart from the animal organism and its functions until we show that consciousness and personal identity can survive death. All that the discovery of supersensible forms of energy proves is that the limitations of reality are not confined to the material world as we directly know it, but that there may be vast regions of energy which can be inferred or known only by its effects in the physical cosmos."

I am satisfied that more than three-fourths of all men and women have had positive proof, if they would accept it, of the existence of spirit. I say positive proof if they would accept it, because skepticism has become so popular and universal that men have been taught to deny their own senses, but among those that are not ready to deny the evidence of their own senses are a great majority who in their hearts can say, "I know there is such a thing as spirit existence," and even those who claim to be the strongest materialists have evidence within themselves that they are wrong.

Yes, everything has life. All life is motion, and it is the life in the body that keeps the body intact, supports it, and maintains it; and if we examine carefully this life, not only in our body, but in everything that is, we find even the smallest insect and plant acting according to the law of mind, evidencing that it thinks or that thought is active in it. If this be true then can we help concluding that all is mind? Then we justify the Scriptural declaration that God by mind, by a word, created the world.

In examining our own minds we find we have reasons for action, but however powerful the thoughts or reasons may be, unless we will to act, we remain motionless. Then the will to act seems to be another quality in us, which quality, when called into action by the other faculties of the mind, tenses the muscles, and causes motion.—We will to act. This again brings us to the revelation of the name of the Infinite, Yahveh, the "I will be what I will to be," or the will of the universe.

Since we are dependent upon our own will for the power to act, then is not action—no matter in what form it may be found—the result of the power of will? Again, according to the strength of a man's will is the strength of his body. Let a man become angry, see how the red blood obeys the mandates of his will. Men have often been heard to say, "When I am angry I am stronger than under any other circumstances." What is anger?—It is the excitement of the will. In the ordinary individual the will may be excited to such an extent that it actually controls the intellect, and when this power is sufficiently excited to take control of the reasoning powers then we say the individual has lost his reason, or he is mad.

It is the function of all will-power to obey the intellect, in other words, to be a servant, but when the understanding is set aside by the will, then evil is manifest. Since these things are true, is there any evil in the world except that resulting from the will dominating the intellect?—We believe not.

Let us return to the potentiality of the will. We have seen that the strength of man depends upon the strength of will, and if Yahveh is the Will of the universe, then He or It is the strength of all that is. We know that when the mind leaves the body, the body rapidly disintegrates, that so long as the will and all the faculties of the mind are kept active, the body is healthy, strong, and vigorous.

What is it that holds together the atoms or centers of force in the body of man, in the mighty cable, in the great beam, in the keen edge of the sword? As we look at these objects and examine them with our senses we cannot but believe that they are dense, hard, and solid. Since they are not, what is it that appears dense, hard, and solid in this seething, moving mass?—Is it not the same power that enables you to reach out your arm and lay hold of a weight of twenty-five, fifty or a hundred pounds and lift it by bending your arm?—You will, and the arm moves and lifts ponderable objects, then it is the will that moves the arm, is it not? Since God is the creator of all things, the Power of the universe, and his name is Yahveh, "I will be what I will to be," and since all is life and that life is served by the will, then the strength of your arm, of that piece of steel, of that beam, of that mighty cable, is the strength of the will of the Infinite. It is the manifestation of the Will—Yahveh. From the solution of the infinitely small may we not arrive at the solution of the infinitely great? In the limitless universe the same Will holds all worlds, suns, and systems in their place.

Since all is life, boundless, quivering, moving, active life; and since what we call individualized substances—a piece of steel, a crystal, a plant, an animal, a man—are individualized centers of thought; and since all these centers of thought and forces unite to make up one grand body that we call our planet; and since our planet earth is only one "electron," as it were, of our solar system, which is a great, grand atom, and since our universe is made up of multitudes of these atoms, then is it not possible that multitudes of universes make one great body? We are told that there are no bounds to space, that there is no limit to God's universe, so we may reasonably conclude that all these universes are molecules, as it were, making up one grand body, and this body is the life, the substance of Divinity, that all these universes are governed by the indwelling mind which we call God, that all the movements of the heavenly bodies, as well as earthly bodies, telescopic as well as microscopic, are by virtue of the Infinite Will?

The strength in the cable is the strength of the Almighty will, the strength, the power, that gives to everything its bounds. "He gave to the sea its bound, that the waters should not pass his commandment." (Prov. viii. 29. R. V.) Therefore the revelation that the name of the Almighty is Yahveh, the "I will be what I will to be" has furnished a conception by which we may form at least an idea of the all-pervading mind and executive will of the God of all systems, if not universes.

We know something of the actions of will in the body. Is something the matter with the foot, the mind takes cognizance of it and sends to the foot will-power. How does it send that will from the head to the extremities of the body? Can you tell us?—Ah, we may talk of nerve force, of electric currents, and so on, but how little we know of that which we call electricity! We see a man who lives a highly moral life, so filled with electricity that by a little friction he can light the gas with his fingers, and this force[4] seems to be the same that has been harnessed to run our railroads, and to serve in our various industries, and this Will, Yahveh, the God of the universe, may express Himself, Itself, from one end of the universe to the other, by the agency that we call electricity, or some element to us more subtile, and cause to be or not to be according to Infinite Law, in the same way that we take charge of and control our own bodies.

Thus, in considering Yahveh to be the God and Power of the universe, we may safely say that as in the minute, man, the microcosm, so in God the macrocosm—the mind that fills all space, all worlds, all systems, the one God, the one mind, the one force, making up all that we call separate individuals, or universes.

The quotations in this chapter come from the ablest minds of our time and they unite in proving that the best thoughts of the age come to about the same conclusions that Revelation came to centuries ago, and they thus give circumstantial proof of the truth of Revelation. They also give evidence that the human mind, if left free to act from its higher self is led by that higher and spiritual individuality to the same conclusions that were announced by prophets and seers in the ages past. The only thing that now remains is for the scientists to recognize the language. For now "Science" and "Revelation" meet as strangers from a far country, but one day they will meet as friends, then they will see eye to eye and rejoice in the mutual light of each other's mentality—a light which neither can claim as all his own.

CHAPTER 10. MIND-CENTERS

We read in Genesis that "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." We know that the image of a thing is the form, the general order, the construction, the external appearance, of that thing. With regard to the construction of matter, the opinion of some scientists is that it is constituted of centers of force. Now, in considering the name Yahveh, we have presented reasons for believing that all force is by virtue of that which in human manifestation, or manifestation in connection with human mind, is called the will. But the will being simply a force acting in obedience to the thought, and thought being form and order, then, to the end that there may be order in any form, there must be a mind to direct the force, for in all nature's activity order is the direct manifestation of mind. In other words, the existence of a center of mind-activity implies an organization in which is embodied a will, or power of action, and a mind to cause that action to maintain specific orderly arrangement.

In all ages past the order, precision, and limitless power, manifested in the movements of planets, suns, and systems of worlds, have been the wonder of thinking men; but if, as we have concluded, all is mind and all is the product of the Creative Word, then we are compelled to recognize in all these activities of the universe the functioning of mind.

See yonder shining world in space, flying with inconceivable velocity in obedience to the law that governs its every action to the utmost minutia. Let us approach that world. As we near it we behold green fields, beautiful gardens, extensive railroads and steamships and magnificent irrigating systems. We hear the roar of millions of activities. Are they the activities of intelligent, thinking beings? We carry with us an electric receiver, and as we draw still nearer we listen to the tick, tick of that receiver, and lo, we find mind emanating from a people who communicate with each other through space and talk intelligently of their interests, their designs and purposes. The nearer we approach them the more we see that they are all governed by some definite law of action. While each individual seems intent on carrying out his own will and design, yet his will is interdependent upon that of his millions of associates.

Thus, as one has said, "no man liveth unto himself," for no man is independent of all other men, but every man, as a molecule in the great body of humanity, is dependent upon the thought and action of the entire body for his guidance, maintenance, support, and general integrity.

As we view this beautiful world floating in space, we cannot but see that the ultimating laws and forces active therein are manifested in an intelligent, thinking humanity, and we can but conclude that the world that has produced this humanity, this intelligence, must be a body of mind-element. As we visit world after world and find in each great diversity, and yet great unity in as much as they are all peopled with intelligent, thinking, acting, willing humanities, we can but conclude that the bodies of these humanities are mind-centers brought into manifestation by their controlling center which holds in unity all its worlds, controls their every action and keeps them ever revolving through space around itself, their governing center.

These facts are at least suggestive of what revelation brings to our mind in the declaration made in Genesis i. 26, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." In contemplating this text we find its equivalent in this declaration: Let us create an additional mind-center to be manifested among worlds, and let this mind-center have dominion over its world, over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and over all the earth; or, let this mind-center be king absolute, ruling the whole constituent of its planet—all nature below it.

We have concluded, from our understanding of scientific research, that there is order in everything, from the microscopic to the telescopic, and that that order follows a definite law. Therefore we may with very little difficulty discover in man the constitution of the whole body of humanity, he being composed of organs like, yet dissimilar to, the members of all organized life—"a microcosm of the macrocosm." So that each individual is a mind-center, a mind-organ, and when scientists conclude that the atom, or electron, may be but a center of force, shall we not add—may be a world in itself, a mind-center? But here we enter the realm of speculation—through the door of analogy, however.

In a preceding chapter we touched on the thought that Yahveh, the God of the universe, or of all uxiverses, is Spirit, and is the all-pervading formless Former of all things. We shall now consider his image, which is seen in the unity of all organized life.

Every organized form, all organized substance, from the most material to the most ethereal, is organized by thought and bears the likeness to its progenitor that the son bears to his father, and is not only the image and likeness of its father, but is the embodiment and expression of its father, being of the father's life and mind and possessing his attributes, so far as the form is able to receive them. Thus all manifest nature becomes the body of the Infinite, becomes a mind-center to express the thoughts of the thinking Intelligence that pervades and interpervades all space, all worlds, and systems of worlds.

If we accept as a fact—and how can we do otherwise?—that all manifestations of life are mind-organs of the Infinite, then we find a vast field of interesting thought concerning the purpose of God in the creation of man in his image and likeness.

From the foregoing we infer that the whole universe is working together under one controlling Will, working toward one general and well-defined object. And therefore when God said, "Let us make man in our image and like us," it was, as it were, the Infinite Source of all formative law finding intelligent expression in a mind-center which was capable of thinking, knowing and sending forth thought-forming power of such character and potency as to form a world and cause that world to bring forth intelligent beings who were to become its absolute rulers. But man, in order to possess this dominion, must have not only the image, but the likeness of his Creator.

Humanity, the image now existing on this planet, is the product of creative law, as is evidenced by his subordination to that law; but when the likeness is obtained, then will man no longer act blindly under the impulse of law, but he will have awakened to a state of knowing.

This state of ultimate knowing was intimated by our Lord when he said to his disciples, "No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from my Father I have made known unto you." He here brings out the thought—dimly, it is true—that all organized life, man included, is under the absolute dominion of creative law, is a servant, is a mind-center acted upon by that law, without absolute volition—with but partial volition, limited by the organic qualities and the general form which govern the desires, loves and sympathies, and, consequently, the decisions of the will.

Thus man is in the image of God and as yet is a servant, controlled by a Mind, a Will, of which he knows comparatively nothing. And if our conclusion is correct that man, by acting under the impulse of a higher intelligence, is being led through evolutionary processes toward the estate of a volitional, intelligent being, and if this law is universal, then it follows that the higher planets, the elder worlds, must have reached a point where the body politic is not only in the image of God, but has attained to a degree of his likeness, of his purity, of his comprehensive knowledge and of his volitionary dominion over all below—is a mind-organ for the Infinite to fill.

And our sun, at least in its physical manifestation, may contain a luminous humanity whose very bodies are a flaming fire, and who have reached such a degree of likeness to the Father as to have attained the right, through mental and spiritual unfoldment, to have dominion over all below them; and having this dominion over that which is below them constitutes them God. (Ex. vii. 1.) And if the inhabitants of our Father-Mother world, the sun, are the God of the worlds that they have created, then are not they, in their turn, the children of a higher world, of their parent-sun? And thus may we not see in the heavens the great spiritual nervous system of an individual man, having centers-of-mind beyond centers-of-mind, as in our physical structure?—there being one center transcendently above all others, ruling all below it.

For we find from careful study of our own body that, while we have a brain-center, the head, from which all voluntary action emanates, yet there is another brain-center,—some think it is the solar plexus—which governs all involuntary action, such as digestion and the tearing down and the rebuilding of the body; and there is in the experience of many, a consciousness of a mind-center transcendently beyond this—so high, so spiritual, that probably no one has been able fully to comprehend or locate its power. Many have started out "in search of the soul," but it has ever eluded them. And if in our own organism we find that which is transcendently beyond our comprehension, there may be worlds that have become so spiritualized as to be beyond the perception of worlds upon lower planes of existence.

Therefore in our contemplation of universal law we come to the conclusion that the words recorded in our Bible, "Let us make man in our image, etc.," are eternal words; words that have been traversing the infinitude of space through all eternity and will continue to traverse it to all eternity, or so long as organic form finds expression, so long as the Creative Mind continues to form organized mind-centers through which to express itself in some well-defined direction.

For truly we see in nature that every organized form has what we call a specific character; even among men we find that each man has his own peculiar character and sphere of use, the sphere wherein he is normal.

Consequently, God in his infinite purpose is not creating worlds to float in space without a definite purpose, but every organized form is made to be a mind-center, a mind-organ of the Infinite, through which to express some useful thought.

And when man has awakened to a realization of his place in the universe, to the object of his creation, and has voluntarily united his will with the will of the All-Mind, and has complied with the laws of his being, then he will awaken to find God manifested in him, and to find also that that manifestation of God in him is one with the Spirit of the Infinite manifested in all diversified character and form throughout the universe, and, so far as his organization and sphere of use make it possible, he will be enabled to know all that is relative to his plane of existence; and recognizing his position as a mind-organ of the Infinite, he will realize the force of the words expressed by the Nazarene, "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth."

But the full manifestation of this authority and dominion, this image and likeness, is obtained only through organization, correct formation in harmony with universal law. This organization we shall consider later on, in the chapter on "The Elohim," and elaborate in the chapter on "The Eternal Order of Melchisedek," and further formulate and elaborate in the chapters on "The Image of God" and "The Likeness of God," and consummate in "The Image and the Likeness."

CHAPTER 11. THE ELOHIM

It was the Elohim that the Lord Jesus called his Father, and he made the astonishing statement that "no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him (Mat. xi. 27) I.

In the effort to reveal the Father, we necessarily assume thereby to be the son, which does not mean that we assume to have in mind the Lord Jesus Christ who was here nineteen hundred years ago, for the apostle declared the great truth, "Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be" (I. John iii. 2); and the Lord Jesus left on record the commandment, "Call no man your father upon earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven" (Mat. xxiii. 9).

If we are to reveal to you the Father, it is because we have followed the leadings of the Spirit until the Father has revealed himself unto us. But that revelation to our soul cannot become knowledge to you. We make the effort to reveal to you in words that which we have come to know as absolute truth, and you only obtain the knowledge of that truth by the knowledge of the Spirit; "for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Rom. viii. 14); and the Son of God said, nineteen hundred years ago, "If I should say, I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you" (John viii. 55). Therefore it behooves us to give you evidence from the Scriptures of Truth, which some of you hold dear.

The very first utterance of the Old Testament is, "In the beginning God [Elohim] created the heaven and the earth." The noun Elohim is in the plural form, and it would have been correct had the sentence been translated, "In the beginning the Gods created the heaven and the earth." Some authorities have ingeniously tried to evade the consequences of the plural noun in this case by explaining that it is a "plural of excellence." Others hold that it signifies a plurality of attributes or manifestations; but the fact stands out incontrovertibly that throughout is meant a plurality of individuals, and when we reach the 26th verse, we read that Elohim said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."

The thought here is unquestionably that of a company of persons of whom one says to the others, Let us do thus and so—it is not, I will make. (We are not, however, presenting to you a plurality of gods, but a God organized of many members; therefore one God.) In the Hebrew "Let us make" is a verbal form in the plural, emphasizing the conception of plurality quite as much as is done in the English. We are thus brought face to face with language which images this picture to our minds: A plurality of Gods—or Personalities, if you please—deciding upon a concerted work that is to be accomplished, and working together as one body, one man, for the accomplishment of the work agreed upon.

In the second chapter of Genesis begins the use of the name Yahveh, frequently in connection with that of the Elohim—Yahveh Elohim. In the consideration of the name Yahveh we have tried to present it as the embodiment of the idea of the Universal Spirit, the Mind and Will which is the source of all life, mind and action. Consequently, in the union (unity) of the two Divine names, Yahveh Elohim, is brought to light throughout the Scriptures, and in cases too numerous to mention, the conception of the final attainment of man being the unity of his mind and will with the mind and will of God.

Reasoning along this line of thought we come to the following conclusion: Yahveh being the source of all life, of all mind, of all action—Spirit, man in his creation must have been formed of the substance of Yahveh, as Yahveh is the source of all that is. And not only is he the cause of all energy, but his Infinite Mind is the source of all order; and in order there must be a purpose, for without a purpose mind is in discord. Therefore, when Elohim said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," that declared purpose necessarily embodied the thought of taking of the Father and forming the Son; and, while we have no authority in the Scriptures for the statement, we have reason to believe from what has been said that the Elohim are a body of men that, in the æons of time past, were created even as we have been created, and that, having developed through all the experiences of an earthly life, they attained to the unity of their mind and will with the mind and will of their Creator; and, as to the processes of evolution, development, there is no end, they have passed on in knowing the Father, Yahveh, becoming more and more like him, until they have reached heights of attainment so far beyond the possibility of our conception that they have become the Creators, Preservers and Rulers, not of this earth alone, but probably of the whole solar system.

Thus they have become the embodiment and expression of Yahveh, and have a right to be called Yahveh Elohim; and when they said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," they expressed the thought that man, their creation, must pass through all the experiences of an earth life, as they themselves had done, and that, in order to go on in his attainment to that likeness, he must turn his thought and aspiration toward Yahveh, and seek with all his heart to be like him, in perfect harmony with the laws that gave him (man) existence, with the life of which he is the embodiment. When man has reached the point in his experience, where, through knowledge, he is able to give free expression to the life that animates him, he will awaken to the realization that he is the embodiment of Yahveh, and in his unity with the body that is to be formed (see chapter entitled "The Image of God."), he becomes the image of Elohim. That is—as we shall have occasion to say further on—the "image" spoken of by Elohim in Gen. i. 26, was not that of one man, but of a plurality of men; as the Spirit said by the apostle, speaking as by the Christ, "a body hast thou prepared for me," "many members in one body, and all members" in that body. (See Rom. xii.)

Consequently, the revelation of Elohim in material and spiritual form must necessarily be found in the revelation of the ultimation of the expressed purpose to make man in his image and like him. The revelation of this ultimate is brought to light by John the anointed, in his Apocalypse, chaps. i., vii., xiv., xxi. and xxii. One fact, however, is clearly manifest, which is this: All life is of the substance of God; and as Yahveh is one, the one in which not only we, but all that is, lives, moves and has its being, therefore the life of man is the same life—on a lower plane, however—as that which animates Yahveh Elohim. Consequently, all are brethren; and, this being true, the Elohim, through the person of the Lord Christ, called himself our brother, and the mighty angel who gave the Revelation to John and whose glory was so great that the beloved disciple fell down to worship him, said, "See thou do it not: for I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren." While Elohim rightfully commands our highest love and admiration, and even veneration, yet our worship is of Yahveh; and in our prayers when we feel the need of help, the real need of something, we ask Yahveh Elohim as our Elder Brother.

When we have come to know him, to have some idea of the depth of his love, of the grandeur of his nature, the tenderness of his brooding care of us, we approach him with a confidence that is born of boundless love alone—we feel the absolute assurance that we shall always have that which we desire; for, while Elohim is so far beyond us and so incomprehensible to us, we must remember that we are his special care. No wonder that, by the prophet, he compared us to "the apple of his eye"!—the strongest thought-presentation possible. We know how sensitive the eye is, and how much more carefully we preserve it from injury than any other member of the body; such, then, is the loving care and protection extended over us by Yahveh Elohim.

When, through loving devotion to God, our true relation to him begins to be the individual experience, then we shall be given to know God. No longer through belief, no longer by faith, will we apprehend God, but we shall know the Father, and the Father will reveal himself to us as he does not to the world—reveal himself to us not merely in thought, but we shall see his form, feel his mighty power, hear his words, and be fed from the limitless fountains of his love.

You who would have additional evidence from the Scriptures relative to the truths presented in this chapter, we ask to follow the connection in which the word Elohim is used throughout the Scriptures, and also its use in combination with the name Yahveh—Yahveh Elohim; we think enough has been said to give you a light to illumine your search in this direction.

Some very satisfactory Scriptural evidence as to the unity of the body of the Elohim has been given by Henry Proctor, M. R. A. S., F. R. S. L., in a paper which appeared in The American Antiquarian for January and February, 1905. We quote:

"When the great Moses Maimonides wrote the thirteen articles of the Jewish faith which gave an absolute sense to the unity of the Godhead, which before had been understood in a compound sense, he departed altogether from the teaching of the Hebrew Bible on this point; for it is certain that the unity so strongly affirmed there can be nothing else than a compound unity. If we take these very words, which Jewish children are most carefully taught in order to guard them from believing in the Christian Trinity, viz.: Shema Yisrael  Adonai Elohim Adonai echad,[5] we find that even here it is certainly a compound unity that is expressed by the word echad, one, for this word is derived from the root yachad, to unite, and occurs with a compound meaning, hundreds of times in the Tanach, or Hebrew Bible; as in Numbers xiii. 23, 'A branch with one cluster of grapes,' = many grapes in one cluster, a compound unity. In Judges xx. 1, 8, 11, 'The congregation assembled as one man'; 'all the people arose as one man'; 'knit together as one man.' In all these passages echad denotes a compound unity, as also in Genesis ii. 24, basar echad, 'one flesh.' On the other hand, yacheed, which represents an absolute unity, as in Genesis xxii. 2, 12, 16, 'Only son,' Judges xi, 34, 'Only daughter,' is never used to express the unity of God. And not only was Elohim[6] used with a plural signification, but Yahveh, also, as in Genesis xi. 7, 'And Yahveh said Let Us go down, and let Us confound.' And not only so, but the Messiah is distinctly affirmed to be the son of Yahveh in Psalms ii. 2, 7, for in verse seven He says to 'His Messiah,' Beni attah, 'My Son, Thou art.' In Proverbs xxx. 4, His Son is again mentioned. And the earlier books abound with narratives of the visits of Melech-Yahveh,[7] who is recognized as being Himself, Yahveh, or as the Jews say, 'Adonai Elohim.'

'In a fuller sense the term 'Elohim' included not only the Son, the Messiah, but also the angels, for in the 82nd Psalm, the Supreme God is closely distinguished as Elyon, the Most High (v. 6), and He is represented as standing in the congregation of the Gods, En sunagogue Theon, and charging the angelic rulers of this world—that is, Satan and his angels—'with folly.' Again in Psalm xcvii. 9, cal-Elohim, 'all the Gods,' are commanded to worship the Messiah. This is rendered from the Septuagint in Heb. i. 6, Pantes aggeloi Theou, 'All the angels of God.' In Psalm viii. 5, 'A little lower than Elohim,' is rendered, Brachu ti par aggelous, a 'little lower than angels.' So that in the fuller concept of the Godhead, the Melechim, or Aggeloi, were included in One Divine Unity. So that the Christian idea of the Godhead, is far nearer to that taught by Moses, and in the whole Hebrew Tanach, than the Jewish conception of the present day.

"Delitsch, in his 'Babel and Bibel,' says that the Old North Semitic tribes who settled in Babylon, about B. C. 2500, worshipped 'Yahwe, the existing, enduring one, the one devoid of all change,' and that this Yahwe was the spiritual possession of those same nomad tribes out of which, after a thousand years, the Israelites were to emerge. This Being, they called 'El,' which means 'the goal,' to which the eyes of man looking heavenward are turned,—'on whom hangs the gaze of every man.'[8] From this he thought that the Hebrew idea of God was evolved. But this may be regarded as one evidence among many, of the existence of a primeval worship of El Elyon, the Supreme God, which has been identified with the Ilu Siru of the of Hammurabi.[9]

"The Biblical conception of God is sometimes stigmatized as anthropomorphic, but this objection is the outcome of ignorance, for although every appearance of celestial beings is described as being in the form of man, yet it is clear, also, that they believed in an Omnipresent, all-pervading, all-sustaining Spirit,[10] corresponding to the teaching of Paul on Mars Hill, that 'He giveth to all, life and breath and all things,' for 'in Him we live and move and have our being;' and to that of John, that 'God is Spirit,' and that 'no man hath seen God at any time.' So that the Biblical conception of God is that of an all-pervading Spirit, who is everywhere, fills all space, fills all things, is the life and intelligence of all things, and the motive power of all things; and that the Messiah and all His messengers are 'His offspring' (genus), 'Sons of the Most High' (Benai El-Elyon); that all were called 'Elohim,' but over them all the Messiah is supreme, and to Him, as one with El Elyon, the worship of all is due."

The thought presented in this chapter regarding Yahveh Elohim will meet with the strongest prejudice arising in the preconceived ideas of long standing in the mind of the Christian world; ideas which existed, as Professor Proctor says, among the early Semitic tribes. Because of constant touch with lower races who worshipped the sun, moon and stars and the various forces of nature as so many gods, the earliest Semitic thinkers were necessarily driven to the opposite extreme, and in order to preserve their people from leaving the worship of Yahveh Elohim and uniting with the heathen around them in their worship of many gods, they were forced to keep ever before the minds of the people that their God was not divided into many gods, one warring against another, as were those of the heathen, but that he was a Unity, one God. Therefore, as far back as we have any knowledge of it, there have been repeated in the Israelitish ritual the words, "Hear, O Israel: Yahveh our God is one Yahveh," and also the words of the Covenant, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

Now, that the great truth of the multiplicity in unity of the Godhead was known to the writers of the Bible is shown in every utterance in reference to the great Name and in reference to the Elohim; and even in this most emphatic utterance, Shema Yisrael Yahveh Elohim Yahveh echad ("Hear, O Israel: Yahveh thy God is one Yahveh"), it will be seen that the noun Elohim (God) retains a plural form, and that also a plurality in unity is "expressed by the word echad."

But it may be argued that this is not alone a Jewish doctrine, that it was also the doctrine of Christ; for, according to Mark's Gospel, when asked which was the first commandment, he quoted the same words in reply. It is remarkable, however, that, with the exception of Mark, none of the apostles give this form to his reply to the question. Not to question Mark's memory in regard to this matter, the Christ well knew that for many centuries it would be necessary to guard the people against the many gods of the heathen. And did he not well know the dark period through which his revelation must pass before the dawn of the eternal morning?

Were this not true, he would not have told them that he had many things to tell them but that they were not ready to receive them then. Consequently, he made but little effort to reveal to his disciples the great mystery of the bringing together of a body of people and harmonizing them so that they become one body, "many members, and all the members of that one body," all members essential to the constitution of that body. But he laid the foundation for this doctrine in the parable wherein he said, "I am the vine, ye are the branches." Now, you that think, can readily discern the governing law manifest here: Through the vine flows the same life-giving sap that nourishes all the branches.

Being a member of the body of Yahveh Elohim he frequently emphasized the thought, "I can of mine own self do nothing," which was equivalent to saying, Severed from the body of the Elohim I have no power. In his last great prayer (John xvii.) he prayed for those who should believe on him, that they might be one, as he and the Father were one: "I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one." Here in most unmistakable terms is expressed multiplicity in unity, not only in the body of his believers, but also in the body of the Elohim, which he called his Father. Bear in mind the words, "that they may be one, even as we are one"—in the same way. This is unmistakable language.

But we will not extend the argument. While a multitude of texts might be quoted from the Scripture to show that what has been said is indubitably a truth, we know how futile argument is, and realizing the force of the words of the Christ we rest these truths upon them: "He that is of God heareth God's words."

CHAPTER 12. THE ETERNAL ORDER OF MELCHISEDEK

Before proceeding directly to the evidence in the Bible of the existence of this Eternal Order, we make the following statement:

We find evidences from the beginning of Genesis to the time of Christ that there was a Brotherhood of men, who lived in the flesh and were masters in the highest sense of the term. This Brotherhood, like the Christ, were able to command the forces of nature, were righteous in all their ways, and were in direct touch with Yahveh and Elohim—Yahveh, the Spirit and God of the universe; and Elohim, the Brotherhood who were the Creators of the world. These, as we have intimated, were evidently from the age prior to Adam, from the age of which the Orientalists claim to have abundant records, called the Golden Age; and it is also related in mythology that one after another of the gods left the abode of men, Virgo being the last to leave.

There was at that time a regular gradatory line, or, so to speak, a ladder of attainment, a chain of connected links, from the neophytes that were under the instruction of the masters in the body, to the masters that had passed beyond the confines of an earthly existence, on up to the Elohim; and, reasoning from analogy, this chain does not end here, but there are members—men who have lived in the body in other worlds from the beginning of time to the present—who have reached heights of attainment transcending the possibility of our finite conception.

In order to know something of that Eternal Brotherhood we must follow the injunction of the writer of the letter to the Hebrews: "Therefore leaving the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this we will do, if God permit." (Heb. vi. 1-3).

If the Christian church had faithfully followed the leading of the Spirit of God, or would follow it now, it would leave these first principles of the doctrine of Christ and go on unto perfection, where its members would know God and these things whereof we write. And they would know these things, not from theory, but from an experience more perfect, more vivid, more realistic, than the experiences of everyday life in this material world; for the doctrines of Christ are but the types and shadows of the glorious things that God has in store for those that fear to do evil and love God and have perfect confidence in his guiding intelligence.

If you carefully read the sixth chapter of Hebrews, not fearing to accept the truth, you will see wonderful things in Paul's argument. After an earnest appeal to all to believe God and to follow him fearlessly, he closes the chapter with the following words: "That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek."

This allusion to our being permitted, through obedience to the leadings of the Spirit, to enter "that within the veil," and become one with Jesus and that eternal order of Melchisedek, or Yahveh Elohim, is a direct reference to what has always existed in the initiations of the faithful neophyte, who, when he had attained worthiness, was permitted to enter the secret place of the Most High, into the knowledge of that Eternal Brotherhood.

Frequent references are made throughout the Bible to "that within the veil," a veil symbolized by the veil of the temple, dividing the holy place from the Holiest of all. Jesus referred to it frequently and proclaimed himself to be the door, the means by which one may enter in through that veil, "whither," as Paul said, "the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek," implying that that order is within the veil.

We ask our readers carefully to read the seventh chapter of Hebrews, and especially to note the following verses:

"If therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood, (for under it the people received the law,) what further need was there that another priest [Jesus the Christ] should rise after the order of Melchisedek, and not be called after the order of Aaron? . . . For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Judah; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood. And it is yet far more evident: for that after the similitude of Melchisedek there ariseth another priest, who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life. For he testifieth, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek . . . . And inasmuch as not without an oath he was made priest: (For those priests were made without an oath; but this with an oath by him that said unto him, The Lord sware and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek:) By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament."

There is much prejudice on the part of the people in regard to taking the oath of an order that requires secrecy, or, in other words, of an order that requires wisdom on the part of its members as to what is to be taught to the public and what is to be kept for those that are worthy; but here the statement is emphatic that "not without an oath he was made a priest.''

If our Lord Jesus, the Christ, came not after the order of Aaron, as Paul says, but came after the order of Melchisedek, then it follows that the mission of Christ is to lead his followers into the membership of that wondrous Brotherhood, to show them the way through the veil into the Holiest of all, into the great mysteries of that Eternal Brotherhood—a Brotherhood which, the writer said, had "neither beginning of days, nor end of life." Not that this priest Melchisedek was without beginning of days or end of life, for that would be contrary to all that is known of organized or individualized existence. On the other hand, if worlds have circled in the heavens from all eternity, if evolution has always been the law governing all worlds, and if it has been a law from all eternity that there are lines of demarcation between spheres of existence, so that none can pass from that without to that within, from the lower to the higher, until by attainment they have earned the right to do so—until they have grown into it—which is one of the most absolute laws of the universe, then it follows that this order of Melchisedek is the order of all redeemed souls from the beginning of time, and will so continue throughout eternity.

We have long believed that the lifeless shell of the Masonic Order is all that survives of what was originally the living formula of the Eternal Brotherhood; but, through perversion, it has lost so much of its vitality that what now remains is virtually a dead form, and even that form has been so changed that but a small portion of the original is left. There is, however, still enough of the divine order in it to preserve its existence from the disintegrative forces of the ages. But we know this: That grand order of Melchisedek of which Christ came as a representative—as declared in the foregoing quotations—has always existed and will always exist throughout eternity; and we who are willing wholly to follow the Christ and his teachings will certainly be led into full, conscious membership in that glorified Brotherhood.

We will now consider

THE EVIDENCES OF THE EXISTENCE OF THIS BROTHERHOOD IN THE BODY

Paul's reference to Melchisedek and to Abraham will be found in Genesis xiv., and all who are interested in this subject should read the account with the new light we have thrown upon it.

In Genesis xiv. we read the following words.

"And Melchisedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was priest of God Most High (Heb. El Elyon). And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth: and blessed be God Most High, who hath delivered thine enemies into thine hand. And he gave him a tenth of all."

There are several thoughts to be considered in connection with this account. One is the misconception that has arisen in the minds of Christian people regarding this Melchisedek. It is thought that, because Paul said that he was king of righteousness or king of peace, he could not have been an earthly monarch, but we must bear in mind that in those days kings were heads of tribes, or what, in many instances, we would to-day call mayors of cities, and, as a rule, they were independent rulers.

We must also bear in mind, when reading this chapter, that the king of Sodom and the king of Salem went out to meet Abraham, and that both are spoken of as kings. This in itself, as you will see by careful reading, is evidence that Melchisedek was the head or ruling spirit of a resident brotherhood, somewhere in the vicinity of Sodom, and that he was known, not as a fighting king, but as a king of peace.

Those who have studied the laws and principles governing true mystics, know that they invariably profess to be men of peace, and that they are supposed to use their mystic powers to perpetuate peace. If there was an organized body of those holy men who lived before the time of Adam, and were gathered from those who are called in Genesis vi. 2 "the sons of God," in contradistinction to the sons of men, then they possessed similar powers to those manifested to the world by the Lord Christ; otherwise the statement in Hebrews that Christ "came after the order of Melchisedek" could not be true.

It is generally supposed that this allusion to the order of Melchisedek had reference in some way to his personality or life; but the word "order" has here a double meaning. It signifies, first, an organization or society of persons having some common rule and obligation, as, for instance, a mystic order; and, second, a system of methods of procedure, usages, arrangements, methods of life, which form the constitution, or fundamental principles, of an organization of men.

As the members of this order of Melchisedek lived from God, Spirit, and were one with him, they possessed powers similar to those possessed by Elijah, Elisha and the Christ, and through those powers they held the respect, the reverence, the awe, of the child-races, and were enabled to be to those races guides and instructors, and to control the destinies of men, as we shall see further on.

Another thought is clear here; namely, this Melchisedek was in the body, not a spiritual form as some suppose, for he brought bread and wine to nourish Abraham after his long struggle with the kings; and Abraham gave Melchisedek a tenth part of the spoils that he had taken from the kings. So Melchisedek not only offered unto Abraham material nourishment, but he, in turn, received from Abraham material substance for himself and for his people.

We find in Genesis xvii. 1, the following words: "And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, Yahveh appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect." Whatever this appearance may have been, whether it was a man in the body or a God-man from the heavens, we have no absolute knowledge, but that it was one who talked to Abraham as a man talks to another man, face to face, is unquestionable. And this is further evidenced in chapter xviii. 1-8:

"And Yahveh appeared unto him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; and he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood over against him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself to the earth, and said, My lord, if now I have found favor in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant: let now a little water be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your heart; after that ye shall pass on: forasmuch as ye are come to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou hast said. And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes. And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetched a calf tender and good, and gave it unto the servant; and he hasted to dress it, And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat."

There are several points that we ask you to note in this account: The first is that Yahveh appeared to him, and then it is said that three men stood by Abraham, not three angels—evidently the ones whom he called Yahveh; although if the account had said angels, as the word "angel" merely means messenger of God, it would not imply that they were not messengers in the body. That these were men, there is no doubt, for in verse 3 Abraham said, "My Lord," or "My Master;" the word here is Adonai, which means master, one to whom authority has been delegated from a higher source. That Abraham recognized their superiority as masters is shown in the words, "If now I have found favor in thy sight," and in the fact that he bowed himself before them. Another evidence that they were in the body is the inference that Abraham brought them water with which to wash their feet, they having walked a distance in the dust, and also in the emphatic declaration that "they did eat" the bread which Abraham set before them. If all three had not eaten, probably the account would have so stated, but the words are "And they did eat;" and after they had eaten they delivered their message. Please read the entire chapter.

In verse 16 we find the following words: "And the men rose up from thence, and looked toward Sodom: and Abraham went with them to bring them on the way." Mark you, Abraham went with the three men; but in verse 17 the language is changed, for we read, "And Yahveh said, Shall I hide from Abraham that which I do?" What we wish to call attention to here is the fact that one of the three men remained with Abraham and that the other two went on to attend to their work in Sodom, for we read in chapter xix. 1, "And the two angels came to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom." This shows that two of the men went on while one remained with Abraham and gave him God's message.

In chapter xviii. 20, we read that Yahveh said, "Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know." Therefore, whoever or whatever these men may have been, one thing is certain—it was necessary that Yahveh go down and see whether it was altogether according to the cry which had come unto him. In other words, he must go in person that he may know whether the report is true, before justice and destruction can be executed upon Sodom.

Now, if it should be said that this conversation and prayer, or argument—whichever you wish to call it—of Abraham with Yahveh was with a spirit, disembodied, verse 30 would dissipate such a thought, for we read, "And he [Abraham] said unto him, Oh let not Adonai be angry, and I will speak." While heretofore he called this one to whom he had been speaking Yahveh, he now calls him Adonai, Master, and we here make this assertion, that in no case is the word Adonai, or Master, used in connection with a spiritual manifestation, but always in connection with a person, at least supposed to be in the body; neither is it used in connection with the God of the universe.

This being true, it is positive proof that Abraham recognized the one with whom he was conversing as one who was in the body. He continues to use the word Adonai in the last part of his argument to the end of the interview, when the writer giving the account says, in verse 33, "And Yahveh went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham: and Abraham returned unto his place." He did not say that Yahveh had disappeared, or that he went up from Abraham, but simply that he went his way; and where did he go? In verse 21 he said, "I will go down now [to Sodom], and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me," and we have no further account of him.

The next account of the two angels is given in chapter xix. where they come to Lot in Sodom, enter into his house and eat unleavened bread, et cetera. In proof that these men were in the body, we read:

"The men put forth their hand, and brought Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door. . . But he lingered and the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; Yahveh being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city."

Mark you, they laid hold upon the hand of Lot and of his wife and daughters, which no spirit can do, for we well know that spirit cannot touch matter nor matter, spirit. (Spirit may take hold of the mind and thus influence the physical body, as if the body were taken hold of.)

In the foregoing we have evidence, if not absolute proof, of the existence of a Brotherhood in the flesh who were directly in touch with Yahveh, the Spirit of the universe, and one with him, and that they were so recognized by Abraham, who was virtually a neophyte under the guidance and instruction of Melchisedek and of the Brotherhood with whom Melchisedek was connected.

As further evidence of the existence of this Eternal Brotherhood, we read in Genesis xxxii. 24-28:

"And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was strained, as he wrestled with him. And he said: Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for thou hast had power with Elohim and with men, and hast prevailed."

Here we find that Jacob wrestled with a man, whom he recognized as of the Elohim, that is he struggled with him before he obtained his new name, Israel, which means prevailing prince; which is to say that he had dominion in the line of his calling, as he demonstrated when his angry brother, who came out to slay him, gave expressions of love to Jacob instead of anger.

In verses 29 and 30 we read:

"And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel [i. e., the face of God]: for I have seen Elohim face to face, and my life is preserved."

This implies that, while Jacob recognized that he was wrestling with a man, he knew that he was a God-man, one having oneness with Yahveh Elohim. What the nature of that wrestling was, whether mental or physical, we are not told, but the fact that he recognized that he was wrestling with one who had power to confer upon him the thing desired, is evidenced in the words, "I will not let thee go except thou bless me."

We wish again to emphasize the thought that Jacob knew that he was wrestling with a man; and when he received the blessing he wanted to know the man's name. How natural it is for the human mind to want to identify everybody with a class or name, which implies merely the plane, office or sphere that the person occupies in this world, in place of recognizing his or her spiritual calling.

As the angel who wrestled with Jacob and was called Elohim, was of that grand, old order of Melchisedek, he had received a new name, which was of the Spirit, and belonged exclusively to his sphere of use in that mystic body, therefore he refused to give Jacob his name.

We read in Judges xiii. 6:

"Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, A man of Elohim came unto me, and his countenance was like the countenance of an angel of Elohim, very terrible: but I asked him not whence he was, neither told he me his name."

Now, observe that this messenger of Elohim appeared as a man to the woman, and she called him a man of Elohim—man of God—which was a common expression applied to those who belonged to that holy Order of Melchisedek. Now, when her husband, Manoah, came:

"He said unto the angel of Yahveh, I pray thee let us detain thee, until we have made ready a kid for thee. And the angel of Yahveh said unto Manoah, Though thou detain me, I will not eat of thy bread: and if thou wilt offer a burnt offering, thou must offer it unto Yahveh. For Manoah knew not that he was an angel of Yahveh." (vv. 15, 16.)

This means he did not know that the angel was in the spirit-form and not in the material body. Again we read:

"And Manoah said unto the angel of Yahveh, What is thy name, that when thy saying comes to pass we may do thee honor? And the angel of Yahveh said unto him, Why askest thou after my name, seeing it is secret?"

The angel did not deny that he had a name, and this teaches us that those who are called angels are the souls of men who have lived in the body, and, of course, had a name among men, but when they left the sphere of evolution and became members of the order of Melchisedek, a new name was given to them, which is the name of their calling in the Divine Order.

The fact that they are men who have lived on earth, and are our brethren, was shown by the angel who gave the wonderful revelation to John (Rev. xxii. 8, 9):

"And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which showed me these things. Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them that keep the sayings of this book: worship God."

This tells us that the angels of God are no more nor less than our brethren who are living or have lived upon the earth or some other world, but who have passed beyond the point where they are governed by the laws of generation, for there are many who have completed their fleshly existence and passed on as members of the Eternal Brotherhood; and the angel that appeared to Manoah and his wife was undoubtedly of that higher order, and had passed on, for in Judges xiii. 20, 21 we read:

"It came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of Yahveh ascended in the flame of the altar. And Manoah and his wife looked on it, and fell on their faces to the ground. But the angel of Yahveh did no more appear to Manoah and his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was an angel of Yahveh."

That this angel of Yahveh manifested to Manoah that he had dominion over the elements is suggested in the words, "And the angel did wondrously: and Manoah and his wife looked on."

We read in Joshua v. 13-15:

"And it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? And he said, Nay, but as the captain of the host of Yahveh am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith Adonai unto his servant? And the captain of Yahveh'S host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so."

The connection between this verse and the following chapter is not given, but it is said in Joshua vi. 2, that "Yahveh said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thy hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valor." And he instructs Joshua how to take the strong city, but we have in this case no evidence showing whether this messenger was in the flesh or not; he simply said that he had come as captain of Yahveh'S host, as the superior of Joshua, in that he gave Joshua orders; thus proving that he was at least one of the Masters.

In I. Samuel ii. 27, we read:

"And there came a man of Elohim unto Eli, and said unto him, Thus saith Yahveh, did I plainly appear unto the house of thy father, when they were in Egypt in Pharaoh's house."

He said that he "plainly appeared," but he did not say definitely whether it was in the person of a man, or whether it was as a spirit messenger, or whether it was in the form of a word of Elohim. But the instances showing that men of Elohim appeared to the children of Israel, the covenant people, as guides, protectors, and controllers of the affairs of men, are too numerous to mention.

These quotations suffice to show, with the aid of the chapters in immediate connection with them, that there did live during the period of the patriarchs, even down to the time of the Judges, an order of mystics called "Masters" by men, but who called themselves an "Order of the Sons of God," who were in the body, yet not of the people; they lived in obscurity, and came forth only to deliver messages from Elohim.

We have, moreover, chosen quotations that in the past have been a mystery. The Christian world has erroneous ideas regarding these passages and regarding the angels of God. Many believe that the angels of God are uncreated beings, or of a separate creation, that they were never men in the body; whereas the quotations given prove the opposite, namely, that all of them are men who have come up by means of the experiences through which we ourselves have passed, and have gone on and become one with Yahveh Elohim.

There is reference to another phase of the manifestation of this order of Melchisedek in the account of Enoch, who "walked with Elohim and was not, for Elohim took him;" and again, in the story of Elijah, whose name—El-i-Yah, that is, Yahveh is my God, my power—was undoubtedly given him by the Brotherhood. The meaning of his name was fully verified in the history of the doings of Elijah, in the great power that he manifested over the forces of nature—power evidently greater than that manifested by those before him, or by those after him, with the exception of the Christ; and when Elijah was taken up in a whirlwind his powers, or his mantle, fell upon Elisha.

You will see by carefully reading accounts in the Scriptures that there were men in the body and out of the body who demonstrated by the wonders they performed that they were members of that Eternal Brotherhood. When we say wonders, we do not mean miracles as miracles have been understood, for nothing is done that is not in accordance with the laws of nature; but when men have become God-men, they may lay hold upon superior laws and accelerate or retard the working of laws already active in nature.

CHAPTER 13. JESUS OF THE ORDER OF MELCHISEDEK

In the preceding chapter we considered references in early Biblical history to the physical manifestation of the Order of Melchisedek. The unequivocal declaration in Hebrews that Jesus was of that Order is a fact, whatever the belief may be regarding the authenticity of the Epistle to the Hebrews or of the Bible.

The existence in all times past of what are called mystic orders, is evidence in itself that instructions have been left on record concerning laws and methods of life by which man may obtain superordinary, not supernatural, powers. These records are not so full in the Bible as in the chronicles of a few of the most ancient orders still surviving. These chronicles contain, however, scarcely more than shadows of the truth—reflections from the time when "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Gen. vi. 5.) Because of these evil imaginations whatever of divine truth man was able to obtain through the members of the Order of Melchisedek; was degraded for selfish purposes; and so, as the ages rolled on, perversion increased until, when the Christ came, the light of those truths had almost left the earth.

We have in the Bible, accounts of three persons that attained complete unity with the Father and overcame death, although in the case of the first, Enoch, the seventh from Adam, the account is so meager that we are left largely to speculation in regard to his attainment, for we read simply that "Enoch walked with Elohim: and he was not; for Elohim took him." We are told that Elijah was taken to heaven in a whirlwind. Heaven means merely the region above us. Now, these men may have been taken to the locality of this Brotherhood, on earth, or, their bodies having been transmuted to spirit-bodies, they may have joined. the Brotherhood in the heavens.

Everybody is familiar with the account of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, and with the fact that he took special pains to demonstrate beyond question to his disciples that it was not a spirit-body that he possessed after the resurrection, but the same physical structure that was placed in the grave. This demonstration that he had power over death, as well as over all other enemies, was the crowning revelation that he came to give to the world.

We noticed in a former chapter that of this Order of Melchisedek—this Eternal Brotherhood that has been from all eternity and will be to all eternity—are the angel messengers of Elohim who guide and control the affairs of earth; and they have caused to be put on record the truths of the Hebraic and Christian Bible—still held sacred by a few.

We are told that Abraham was chosen and was led out from Ur of the Chaldees, the greatest and most enlightened nation then living on the planet; but a nation, like the Egyptian, devoted to magic, which they had perverted. Abraham was chosen because, having reached a development superior to that of his race, he was better fitted to become the progenitor of a people who would in the fulness of time constitute the first ripe fruit of the earth, a center around which all other nations would gather, a body that would become the light of the world.

The great truths held by this divine Order of Melchisedek and the purpose in the mind of the Elohim in the creation of the world, were set forth in the types and shadows of the Mosaic law, and in what was denominated the ten commandments, "the everlasting covenant." And, finally, Abraham's posterity, Israel, the covenant people, were watched over by the Elohim and guided by their angels—members of the Order of Melchisedek—until the vital formula of types and shadows could no longer hold them, or, in other words, until the nation had developed to a point where the symbolism of religion had accomplished its work, when one of the grand order of Elohim came to earth, and, as the writer of Hebrews says in reference to Jesus, "took on him the seed of Abraham."

You will observe that these words refer to a personality who performed a voluntary act independently of the seed of Abraham, or of the fleshly body which grew from the germ. This implies that Jesus was the incarnation of a personality who voluntarily came to earth and took on a fleshly body, and that the fleshly body which he took was from the seed of Abraham. We have, then, in this declaration two personalities, so to speak, the spiritual soul, or the pre-existing man, and the fleshly body that "he took on him." The English Revised Version has it, "He taketh hold of the seed of Abraham." "Taking hold of" suggests the thought of taking hold of an instrument—a carpenter takes hold of his plane when he would use it; an engineer takes hold of his engine, and thus the engine is caused to express his will. All the prophecies, from beginning to end, demand that the fleshly body of Jesus come of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah and of the lineage of David. (See Deut. xviii. 15-19.)

We are not left to speculate as to what Christ meant when he said, "I am the son of God," "I and my Father are one," "God is my Father," varied expressions, all agreeing with his injunction to the early church, "Call no man your father on the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." The early church claimed that they were the sons of God, as, in fact, do the church of the present day, notwithstanding they have ceased to believe it.

At the moment of his death on the cross Jesus made it known more fully who was his Father when he said, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The word "Eloi" is the possessive form of "Eloah" whose plural is "Elohim." Jesus said, "The Father that dwelleth in me he doeth the works," and again, "I can do nothing of myself," and when Eloah left the physical body, which, up to that time, he had occupied as a temple, the body immediately bowed its head and died. That in calling on the Elohim he used the singular form of the name, indicates the fact that the body had learned that it was the temple of one of the Elohim and that it had been the power of the Elohim manifesting itself to the world through his body. It was the wisdom of one of these wonderful Masters—wonderful to our comprehension—that caused to be recorded in the teachings of the Christ the most practical, the most minute and exact methods by which a man may become a member of that Eternal Order, may become Yahveh Elohim, as were those whom we have been considering.

It was because of this, in part, that Jesus so emphatically declared, "I am the door," "he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter [door keeper] openeth." Now these words of the Christ, "I am the door," direct our attention to the use of a door as the means by which admittance is gained into an enclosure; at another time Jesus declared, "I am the way, the truth and the life," which was equivalent to saying, "I am the door." Again he said, "If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you."

All these declarations—of which the last may be considered the more explanatory—center in the one thought that he was and is the door. To abide in him is to follow his example, to continue to do as he did; and if his words abide in you, you believe his words, you "believe on him." If, therefore, you believe his words, and they abide in your life, that is, if you live in keeping with their requirements, with the directions that he gave, and follow the method s that he taught, then you attain oneness with him, then you are admitted, by virtue of perfect life, in through the door, or gate, into the city of the living God, into membership in that Eternal Brotherhood, the Brotherhood of all the ages; and as the angel said to John, "They go no more out forever."

Thus we are led to the conclusion that in the person of Jesus the Christ was the incarnation of Eloah, one of the Elohim, for the purpose to which he referred in the words, "For this purpose came I into the world." The example that we should notice and follow, is his faithfulness in keeping his thought on the accomplishing of that purpose, announced in the words that we have so often quoted: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." (Gen. i. 26.)

One of the Elohim came and "took on him the seed of Abraham," that, doing away with types and shadows of religious service, he might give to the world all of the vital truth that it was possible for man to receive, and to establish a means by which the higher consciousness of the race can be kept in touch with and under the direct control and instruction of Yahveh Elohim. Thus, so to speak, the leading strings with which to lead the race along regular lines of experimentation have been given to him until the time comes when man has outgrown the knowledge that he is capable of receiving from the recorded teachings of the Christ of Nazareth; then the anointing Spirit of Elohim will again be manifested to the world in a personality that will be called Elijah; for Jesus said concerning Elijah, "Elijah truly shall first come, and restore all things." Now mark you, he declared that Elijah should first come and restore all things, but he added in rather an equivocal way, "Elijah is come already,[11] and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed"—they killed him (John the Baptist).

It is generally thought that he referred to the reincarnation of Elijah, that personality who lived in the time of the Kings and was a light and power to Israel; but God is no respecter of persons (personalities), and in the Eternal Brotherhood, the Elohim, man is named and identified not by his personal appearance, not by his incarnation in the physical body, not by his father and mother, but by his quality and sphere of use. "Elijah" means, Yahveh is my God, my power.

The last declaration of the Old Testament reads as follows:

"Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Yahveh: and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." (Malachi iv. 5, 6.)

Mark you, this is the last declaration of 'the Old Testament Scriptures, where the promise is emphatic that before the closing of this dispensation there will be a man or a body of men whose power will be wholly from Yahveh. In other words, he will become the embodiment and expression of Yahveh Elohim, and will—as Jesus said—"restore all things."

What things?—That which has been lost; for in order to restore a thing it must have been taken away or lost. Jesus came as the redeemer, to save man from the result of Adam's sin (Is. lii. 3), a redemption which is referred to in the fourteenth verse of the last chapter of the last book of the New Testament: "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city." This, then, refers to man's sin and fall and to his being driven out of Eden and from the tree of life, which, symbolically, was guarded by a flaming sword; and the restoration is to be through obedience to the commandments which he has broken, for disobedience was the cause of the fall, or the descent into matter.

While this is, in a way, symbolism, yet it is more than symbolism; it is the quintessence, the epitome, of everything in the revelation that God gave to man from the time of Adam down to the present period, and the accomplishing of the purpose that was declared in Genesis i. 26.

Therefore, when Elijah comes, he will be the "Elijah" because he has accepted the Everlasting Covenant, which opens with the words—as translated in King James Version—"I am the Lord your God," the meaning of which in the Hebrew is, I will be your power, your strength, and then continues, "Thou shalt have no other God," no other power, you shall trust in nothing but in my name, in me. In other words, you shall surrender the animal self-will and merge it into the Eternal Will, Yahveh, the God of the universe, in order that you may become what it was designed that you should be, a "son of God," the embodiment and expression of Yahveh, a member of the organized body of the Elohim; and then you will have become his image and his likeness. This will constitute the Elijah that is coming to restore all things.

The restitution consists in bringing man into Divine Order, in the reorganizing of that Holy and Immortal Order, of all ages and worlds, that existed from all eternity and will exist to all eternity. And woe to the man or to the woman who attempts to organize that order, not having been prepared and "sent" of God to do that work!

A WORD OF CAUTION

We have presented in this chapter the thought of a mystic order that, from all eternity, has existed in all worlds and systems of worlds. The methods of this order lead men from the narrow sphere of his earthly consciousness into the consciousness of having become a center through which the mind of the Infinite finds free and perfect expression.

This teaching opens the door for the deceptive influences that are now very active to deceive the people. The suggestions made by us in former writings have already been taken up by spiritualistic mediums and by selfish persons who wish to make money out of the desire of the people for the higher life—the reaching out for the mystic now so prevalent.

Organizations have been formed, malignant in character, and of a nature to appeal to certain evils dominating the life of the people. Truths expressed in this chapter have been perverted and made the means of attracting the people and gathering them into these organizations of perverse and dark psychic influences, thus misleading and destroying those who are seeking the mystic.

Consequently, our readers will no doubt hear ideas presented in this chapter expressed in perverted ways by different societies; but remember, the only safety is to accept the teachings of the Christ, who is the Door, and to follow them absolutely until all the evils of your nature are conquered, and the soul awakens to a conscious unity with the Spirit of the Highest. Remember that "as many as are led by the Spirit of God [not by spirits that profess great things, but by the Spirit of God], they are the sons of God."

Again, it should be remembered that Jesus lived the regenerate life; and although his period was not the time for regeneration to be taught, yet it is understood by the Roman Catholic Church, and the clergy of that church have always been required to live the regenerate life.

The foundation of the Esoteric teachings is laid in the regenerate life—this is the only door, and we repeat the words of the Christ, "He that climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber."

You that are Christ's, sheep of his flock, you that are the sons of God, will seek God and his righteousness wholly and will not be misled by these deceivers of whom Jesus said that "if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect;" for if you conquer all the evils of your nature and unselfishly seek God with all your heart, then his angels will guide you and shed a constant light on your path, so that nothing can deceive you.

CHAPTER 14. THE ANGELS OF GOD

The foregoing presentation of an idea of God within reach of the reasonable conception of the human mind, should bring to us a joy in the realization that God is not a myth, an incomprehensible something, or the mere life-principle, or even the spirit of mind, as many are now coming to believe, which is a vagary that, at best, can bring but little comfort, and certainly cannot produce the faith requisite to command zeal of action. The childish feeling of wonder at the incomprehensibility of God has been such in the past as to cause an actual fear of spirit and spirit-manifestation. This wonder and fear have not been confined to the ignorant.

According to late newspaper reports, a prominent minister of England, upon witnessing a phenomenon attendant upon a woman engaged in a "religious revival," was actually frightened at the manifestation of light, because it was supposed to be a manifestation of Spirit. We believe that fear causes much of the materialism and skepticism as to God and Spirit and the power of his angels to appear to men and guide their lives as in Bible times. Much skepticism also arises from the vagueness of the popular conception of God and his angels.

The Lord Christ, who spoke with the authority of Yahveh Elohim, pointed forward to the present time when he said, "The hour cometh, when I shall no more speak to you in proverbs, but shall tell you plainly of the Father," and if the Spirit through the instrumentality of this volume has told you plainly of the Father, you should not allow the realistic conception of God to lower the greatness and sublimity of the ideal conception. The natural inclination of man is to lose interest in a thing and to lower his estimate of it as soon as he begins to comprehend it; but we assure you that were it possible for you to have a glimpse of the realities of the existence of that wondrous Brotherhood, Yahveh Elohim, the Creators of the world, you would find their real nature and character so far transcending your former conception of God that your mind would sink beneath its effort to comprehend the wonders of that Deific Mind. Yet God in his love, wisdom, and goodness has so constructed us in his image and has led us so far into his likeness that we can now begin to apprehend something of the realities of his own great nature.

If what has been said enables you, the true child of God, to look up with a realistic conception and exclaim in the language of the Master, "Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on, earth," then you will begin to comprehend the reason for the opening words of this prayer; for the soul recognizes the Father not as a myth, not as something far beyond the possibility of our perception, but as a real, tangible Existence, as an intelligent Being that is able to sympathize, through knowledge gained by experience, with all the weaknesses, all the vicissitudes of the human family, and yet loves us with a love transcending the love of the mother for the child in her arms, or the love of a husband for his bride.

This is a realization that will bring us nearer to God and bring God nearer to us; and in the order of the heavens, established by the great wisdom and goodness of God, we are brought in direct touch with his mind, his will, his loving sympathy, and his all-pervading mentality.

As to how we are brought in touch with God's great nature, we have not been left to speculate, for every great truth has been recorded in some form in that wondrous book, the Bible. The apostle in his letter to the Hebrews said:

"But ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant."

Here the apostle, either by vision or by revelation, is given to understand the order of the heavens and announces it by speaking of "just men made perfect," and of the "church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven."

It has been given us to know—and reason substantiates the fact—that according to the grade of development is the nearness of the soul to the throne of the everlasting Father, so that there are in the spirit-world at the present time not only the wondrous body of Yahveh Elohim, but there are angel-spirits ranking in gradatory order from the highest sphere down to the border-land between the mundane and the spiritual.

Therefore when Yahveh Elohim has a message to send to the sons of earth, it is sent through the angel messengers, through "the spirits of just men made perfect;" and we have reason to believe that it is sent from one to another until a messenger is reached whose potentiality enables him to meet the capacity of man who is to receive the message, for there are angels so highly developed that their words would be to man a consuming fire. Therefore the word of Yahveh Elohim must be passed down through the mind-organs of those who are nearer to man in order that he may be enabled to receive it without injury. The Lord Jesus said, "In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you." (John xiv. 2.)

In Jacob's vision

"He dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, Yahveh stood above it." (Gen. xxviii. 12, 13.)

Thus this gradation is, as it were, a ladder set up on the earth (man), whose top reaches to heaven, Yahveh being at the head of the ladder, and each rung of the ladder from Yahveh down to man a stage of unfoldment, of spirit-life, and all the angels upon these varied planes are, as the Apostle Paul said, "ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation." These ministering spirits minister to man according to his unfoldment.

The ministering spirits—ministering to those among men who are sufficiently developed to receive heavenly truths and to put them into practice—have overcome, and entered the realm of immortality; in other words, they are souls that are not bound to the earth-sphere but live from the heavens. There are, however, multitudes of souls that are earth-bound, that know nothing of the realities of a spirit-existence; these are they that spiritualists—so-called—are dealing with, and among these earth-bound souls there are as many malignant, evil-designed personalities, as there are in the physical body among men—yea, more.

For when we come to deal with souls that are earth-bound, we come in contact with that quality of human consciousness that is no longer restrained by culture or society; we are in touch with the impulses and passions that arise from the lower nature or a lower organism. Because of this, these earth-bound souls were called by the Lord Christ "demons," devils, for, as it is written, "the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be." These earth-bound souls are at enmity with the law of God, and when a person enters into covenant relation with God to seek God and righteousness with all his heart, and has decided to overcome generation and to live henceforth in the regeneration that he may attain immortality, these souls at once become to him pestiferous enemies to hinder, to deceive, to mislead and to destroy.

Thus we find ourselves on the earth-plane surrounded by dark and malignant spirits; yet these dark forces have no power at all except what is derived from the spirit of the mundane or the earthly spirit. And so far as the children of God ally themselves to the Spirit of God in covenant relation, and place their hand, as it were, in the hand of God's angel, overcoming fear and following the leadings of that divine messenger wholly, to that degree they are safe.

But if one desires power, honor, wealth, the gratification of the lower nature, or any of the things that attract the men of the world, and attempts to gain them through unity with these mundane souls, the angel of God will leave him at once to the unmerciful influences of the dark world, who will promise and in part fulfil their promise to gratify the desires of the person and to give him the condition on earth that he desires; but with every benefit derived from that source will come many, many evils, sorrows and perplexities, until the soul is hopelessly bound and drawn out of the body to become an associate of the dark and malignant forces to which it has yielded itself.

This is a dark picture, but this fact is the cause of the old idea of a tempting Devil. Remember, however, that God rules the universe and that there is no power but that which is derived from the name Yahveh, or from Universal Mind and Will. Because of this it is said, "The name Yahveh is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it, and is safe."

While we bring to light this dark side of the picture, we hope that you will not dwell upon it. We know that the world is full of darkness, temptation, deception, and all that is evil—evil because antagonistic to our hope and desire to be one with the Father; but it remains for us to hold closely to the original Christian principles, that is, consecration of our life to God and confiding trust in him, like the trust of a little child in the arms of its parent. It is this condition of mind that has preserved the church, notwithstanding its errors, its false doctrines. These principles have preserved its people through all the centuries down to the present. Because of their failure to maintain these principles the angel in the Revelation said to God's people:

"But I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I come to thee, and will move thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent." (Rev. ii. 4.)

Here we meet, not new doctrine, not new theories, but are brought back to the "rock of ages," to the foundation laid by the Christ 1900 years ago; "For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." (I. Cor. iii. 11.) He is the only door. On the contrary, instead of presenting new doctrine, we are obeying the injunction of the Spirit by the apostle: "Wherefore let us cease to speak of the first principles of Christ, and press on unto perfection." For, as the Christ said, "I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now."

As the fulness of times has come and the souls of men have ripened and matured, the period when men are to come into the image and the likeness of God is at hand, and in order to bring about this image and likeness an advance in knowledge is necessary.

To be told "plainly of the Father" and of his son—of the object of his coming and the methods by which we may come into unity, oneness, harmony, with him—is an absolute prerequisite. It is also just as necessary to expunge the errors from our thought and to realize that we have a loving, merciful and kind Father, who is our Father by virtue of creation, by virtue of regeneration and by virtue of having been begotten from above, so that it is possible for us to enter that bosom of love and to become partakers of that mind, wisdom, knowledge and power. Being partakers of him, of his great nature, our souls are fed with immortal food, and by that food they grow, unfold; and the consciousness of God the Father, daily becomes more vivid, the realization more perfect, which enables the soul to look up as a little child into the face of its loving mother or father, and to say, '"Our Father." If this work enables you to do this with a more vivid realization, it will have accomplished much.

To leave the thought here, however, may leave an open door for some dear souls to be misled for a time, for, from the picture that we have presented, as the mind takes hold of the great truth that God's angels are not a separate creation, but, as the apostle Paul declared, are "souls of just men made perfect," some may imagine in some vague way that these souls occupy certain spaces, one above another, as if in suspension in the heavens, from the abode of the Elohim to the earth; but the facts are these:

Spirit consciousness is consciousness of him who is the "fulness that filleth all things," for Yahveh is Spirit and interpervades all space. To the soul that is awakened to a spiritual consciousness, there is no sense of distance; that is to say, time and space are virtually obliterated and the soul is conscious only of the presence of the center of that quality that it has come in touch with; so that if we should attempt to locate spirit-heavens, it would be only relative to the sphere of consciousness of the soul and would have no relation to distance or to locality.

Yahveh, the God of the universe, embodies all qualities that exist, and the beginning of spirit-consciousness is an awakening to certain qualities. The higher the soul, the more comprehensive its ability to grasp the multifarious qualities existing in Divinity, and the lower the soul in degree of unfoldment, the more restricted is its comprehension of various qualities.

Swedenborg had a vague and imperfect idea regarding the spiritual heavens. He claimed that he visited many heavens of souls in their different degrees of unfoldment. Be that as it may, one thing is certain—there are centers, so to speak, where souls of like development are gathered together, all the way from the child-spirit that is highly unfolded but still a child, up to the pure love-sphere of innocence and purity and so on up into the realm of mind; and each of these centers—or heavens—is approachable by certain means which the person will apply during the progress of his development.

Therefore, unless forewarned, there is liability of the soul's coming into touch with, let us say for illustration, the childlike innocence and pure life-element that occupies a certain center, a heaven, and if the soul knows no better, it may think that it has reached the highest heaven, the ultimate, and go no further. By another mental state, arising from the application of certain laws, it may reach that heaven that is bright, loving, pure, active in every good word and work, and may think that it has reached the heaven that is to be imparted to earth when man has come into the image and likeness of God; or it may, through another method, reach a heaven that is characterized by certain knowledge; for there are many heavens, and all these centers may be touched by applying certain laws in the process of walking the "narrow way."

The danger is that when man has touched a center, or heaven, he at once ceases to reach out to God and settles down satisfied in the sphere that he has touched, and thus his progress ceases. In some cases not only will the progress cease, but there is a liability of his being deceived by dark intelligences, thrown out of the path and led down into darkness.

But keep in mind the one thought, that Yahveh Elohim, the God of the solar system, is your ultimate, is the end that you seek; keep in mind the highest that you can conceive and pray daily and earnestly to know the truth that you may live in harmony with it; and if you become conscious of one of the lesser heavens, learn from it, but do no desire to remain there. Remember the object of creation, and therefore the work before us, the sons of God, is to unite our consciousness with the great Nature that created this system and through it to bring upon earth a like organism, which, under the guiding intelligence of Yahveh Elohim, will become the perfect expression of his Mind and Will, and will become, as was revealed to John, a king and priest unto God and "reign on the earth."

The thought that in the past has occupied the mind of the Christian world—that of dying and going to heaven, as the ultimate object of our creation—is an error, for the Lord Christ's teaching was of immortality, not of the soul only, but immortality of the entire man; and the purpose as announced in the beginning was that man should have "dominion over the earth." The purpose was also revealed to John on Patmos when the angel said, "The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ [anointed]."

When we take into consideration the facts presented in the early part of this work, the "Immensity of the Universe," the infinity of space filled with worlds and universes, and think reasonably of these things, our mind is turned away from the childish thought that has occupied it in the past—that of some far-off world to which we must go when we leave this earth—and we awaken to the truth that the whole tenor of Revelation is to prepare man to become a king and a priest unto God and to reign on this earth. This thought is necessary in order to understand the following chapters on the image and the likeness of God.

CHAPTER 15. THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION

The reader has no doubt inferred from what has been said that in order to have a correct knowledge of Jesus, his mission and our relation to him as our Savior, it is absolutely essential to believe that he was the son of Joseph and Mary, in the sense in which we are the children of our parents.

We meet here the strong preconceived idea on the part of some of our readers that if any part of the Scriptures is not infallible, then no part of it is infallible. This is a childish thought. The Lord Christ said, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." The truth is not all comprehended in the Bible. Truth is the facts concerning things that are, in contradistinction to the ideas concerning things which are not. Therefore to know the truth, no matter where we find it, is a saving quality. Truth is vital. Error is dark and disintegrative.

This brings us to the question: Were the teachings of the apostles, the immediate successors of our Lord, infallible? that is, were the apostles incapable of mistake or error? We must admit, if we allow our reason to have its normal sway, that they were not infallible. An illustration of this may be found in the Gospel according to John.

Of all the disciples not one was so near to the Lord Christ as the beloved disciple,, John; not one has given to the world such valuable thought, for his Gospel is a book superior to all other books in existence. Admitting this and also admitting, as many of our leading clergymen do, that if the entire Bible except the Gospel of John, should be destroyed, the Christian church would still have sufficient vital truth to go right on with its work; yet, in the last verse of this beloved disciple's Gospel, we read these words: "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written." (John xxi. 25.) Think of this statement! What a wonderful exaggeration! Shall we not say a thoughtless exaggeration? for, if there ever has been a man that has been honest and true, the beloved disciple was that man.

But let us use our reason. The Greek tongue is as compact as our own, and if there had been a disciple who had followed the Lord Christ from his birth to his crucifixion and resurrection, and had recorded every step he took, every word he uttered, yet the book that contained it all would be no larger than a moderate volume of our time. To say that he supposed the world would not contain the books necessary to give a full account of the Lord's acts, is readily seen to be a great error, but, as we have said, it is an error in judgment.

It is also evident that there is a tendency to abbreviate in all the Gospels. Now it is possible that Matthew and Luke may have become familiarly acquainted with Joseph or Mary or both, and that Mary or Joseph informed them concerning the remarkable experience prior to the conception and birth of the Lord Christ, for there is a law—let us make the statement without the elaboration necessary to prove it—that in reincarnating, the soul always presides at the conception of the body in which it is to incarnate. There are now in the world, we believe, thousands of men and women, and especially women, who can tell you that they were vividly conscious of being overshadowed at the time of the conception of their child.

If the soul of the ordinary man is strong enough to produce marked conditions at the time of conception, what must the conditions have been when Yahveh Eloah overshadowed Joseph and Mary with his great glory and power! If this is a fact, it alone is enough to suggest to our mind the thought that if such a soul should come near enough to enter into the life-currents of a man and a woman in order to procure a physical body, his power would be sufficient to overpower, for the time being, all the conscious ego and to possess them wholly—to an extent that neither of them would be conscious of what had taken place.

This may explain what Matthew said in his Gospel, that when Joseph found Mary with child, "he was minded to put her away privily," but the angel of the Lord informed him in a dream that he should take to himself Mary his wife, because the conception was by virtue of the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit.—This is the kernel of the whole matter.

In Luke's Gospel we find that the conversation between Mary and the angel was prior to conception, for the angel said, "the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee;" the whole account is in the future tense, because the account in Luke's Gospel is simply prophecy. Therefore, it tells of something which had not yet happened. The only point that remains to be cleared up is the fact that Joseph was unconscious of what had taken place.

Let us now turn our attention to another point in this connection. The first noticeable fact is that John, the beloved disciple, gives no account or even intimation of the "Miraculous Conception" of his Master; and he more than all the other disciples, had opportunity to know in regard to this, because "when Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold, thy mother! And from that hour the disciple took her unto his own home." If Mary lived with John, which no doubt she did for some years, he more than all the others would be expected to be thoroughly familiar with all the facts concerning his Master, including those relating to his conception and birth, especially, if his conception was as wonderful as that recorded by Matthew and by Luke.

Another fact is prominent in this connection; namely, in all the preaching of the apostles, beginning with the book of Acts to the last chapter of Revelation, there is not one reference to Christ's miraculous conception, but on the contrary, they preached him as a man (Acts ii. 22; x. 34-43), as one of their brethren, as Paul so plainly expresses it:

"Wherefore it behooved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted."

Now, if Christ was Divinely Begotten, he certainly was not in all points like unto his brethren, but he had every advantage over any other man that ever had lived.

If the doctrine of the miraculous conception is essentially a part of the Christian religion, why is it that Mark, John, Paul and all the apostles whose letters constitute the New Testament, never mention it?

Let us again turn to Matthew's Gospel. He begins his account with the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Mark you, he says, "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham," and he closes it as he would the genealogy of any other person by saying, "and Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ." Now this is either the genealogy of Jesus Christ, or it is not. If it is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, then Joseph was his father; if it is not the genealogy of Jesus Christ, then God was his father; in the latter case Joseph had nothing to do with it, and the tracing of the genealogy through Joseph is all sham—there is nothing in it. We are here brought face to face with some very stubborn facts.

Let us see what Luke says in his genealogy; he begins it with these words: "And Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli" et cetera. (Luke iii. 23.) Without the parenthesis it reads, "being the son of Joseph, the son of Heli" et cetera, and he closes the genealogy as follows, "the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God," and here the tracing ends. Was not Jesus the son of God as much as Adam? Why then this genealogy at all. For if the Miraculous Conception is a truth it is not the genealogy of Jesus Christ, as he had no genealogy. You may say that this is the genealogy of Mary, but Mary is not mentioned, neither is the genealogy of woman ever counted in the Bible; and even if the genealogy of Mary had been given, it would be traced to Ruth, the Moabitess, for she was the ancestor of Mary, and Jesus would not have come of the seed of Abraham, but of the seed of Lot. But why these difficulties? and why are these things as they are?

Let us turn our attention to the Church and to the Church Doctrine. How early in the history of the Church, the doctrine "that the end justifies the means" came into existence, we are not prepared to say; but the early fathers in preaching to the Pagans constantly met the Pagan belief that their gods were divinely begotten, and no doubt when the early Christians presented the Lord Christ to the Pagans, they said that he was inferior to their gods because their gods were divinely begotten, begotten by a miraculous act on the part of Deity, while Jesus Christ was born of man and woman.

Justin Martyr, one of the Christian fathers, says,

"It having reached the Devil's ears that the prophets had foretold the coming of Christ [the son of God], he set the heathen Poets to bring forward a great many who should be called the sons of Jove. The Devil laying his scheme in this, to get men to imagine that the true history of Christ was of the same character as the prodigious fables related of the sons of Jove."

Again he says, in his Apology to the Emperor Adrian:

"By declaring the Logos, the first-begotten of God, our Master, Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin, without any human mixture, we [Christians] say no more in this than what you [Pagans] say of those whom you style the sons of Jove. For you need not be told what a parcel of sons the writers most in vogue among you assign to Jove. . . .

"As to the Son of God, called Jesus, should we allow him to be nothing more than man, yet the title of 'the Son of God' is very justifiable upon the account of his wisdom, considering that you [Pagans] have your Mercury in worship under the title of the Word, a messenger of God. . . .

"As to his [Jesus Christ's] being born of a virgin, you have your Perseus to balance that." (Quoted in "Taylor's Syntagma," p. 169.)

Meeting such formidable opposition as the Pagan belief presented to the early Fathers, we must admit that it would be a strong temptation to add to the Christian Doctrine and to the written records that were exclusively in their hands, the account of the Miraculous Conception and Virgin Birth as found in Matthew and Luke, and also the parenthesis in Luke's account.

Again, we notice upon carefully reading the Gospel according to Matthew that his account of the birth of Christ, beginning with the words, "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise," is written in a different style and with a different word-formation from the rest of the chapter, and it is so set apart so that it may well be considered an interpolation. The same is true concerning Luke's Gospel; and these two Gospels are the only Gospels in which the birth of Jesus is recorded.

There are two facts that stand out before us, namely, was Jesus that Christ prophesied by Moses and by many of the prophets? If he was, then he was the son of Joseph, the son of Abraham. If he was not the Christ prophesied of, then we may admit for the sake of argument that he was Divinely Begotten. No prophecy from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation prophesies a Messiah Divinely Begotten; on the contrary, all the prophecies concerning the Messiah prophesy a man, not only born of woman, but of the literal descent of Abraham according to the flesh.

In Matthew's account, in order to substantiate the miraculous conception, we find quoted the words of Isaiah (vii. 14): "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."[12] That this refers to the Christ there is grave doubt, but that Mary was a virgin prior to her conception of the Lord Christ is probable. The word "virgin" is rendered "a young marriageable woman" in the margin of the Revised Version and also in Rabbi Leeser's translation of the Bible. There is no thought here whether she had known a man or not, but "a young marriageable woman shall conceive." That is all there is in this quotation, and that Mary was a young marriageable woman and a virgin, and that she did conceive by Joseph and thereby produced the body in which Eloah, a member of the God of the solar system, was incarnate, we have no reason to doubt.

In conclusion we ask you to read Deut. xviii. 15-19 inclusive.

From this prophecy you will clearly see that Jesus could not have been a Son of God after the flesh, and if there was nothing else in the whole Scriptures to contradict the miraculous conception, the words of Jesus himself contradict it positively: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." If these words mean anything, they mean that Spirit cannot generate flesh and that flesh cannot generate spirit. So we repeat, if there were no other statements in the Scriptures to deny the Miraculous Conception of the Lord Jesus, his own words would deny it.

We thought to leave this question for others to discuss, as it is at present a mooted question; but, because of the great necessity of a correct understanding of this subject, in order to justify the truth of the Scriptures in general, as well as to remove the dark veil that is thrown over the church by this fallacy of the Miraculous Conception, we found it necessary to make the foregoing statements in as brief a form as possible.

We have but to glance around us to see the result of this false doctrine. We see the church worshipping "the mother of God." The whole Church, Protestant and Catholic, is bowing down and worshipping the image of a man—actually worshipping the flesh of a man, of a son of Abraham!

Thus the people are transgressing the commandment, "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, the likeness of any form that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them." Yet the entire Christian world is bowing down and worshipping and essaying to serve a man in the image of themselves.

This doctrine was also the cause of the great persecution of the early church and of the dogma of the transmutation of the wafer and the wine into the actual body of Christ. In fact, you can easily trace all the great errors and evils that have followed the Christian church to the belief that the fleshly seed of Abraham was the son of God, forgetting all about that spiritual soul that was indeed the real man, the real savior of the world. As God said by the prophet, "I, even I, am Yahveh; and beside me there is no savior." Some may say: Then Jesus the Christ is God. So he is, but that flesh of Abraham is not God, but as Jesus said, "The Father that dwelleth in me he doeth the works," and he is God, he is our Savior.

CHAPTER 16. THE IMAGE OF GOD

We read in Genesis i. 27, that "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." If we are to consider "The Image of God" in man, as the physical expression or form of man, then we must consider the creative form as manifested in nature. As we have stated in a former chapter, that all nature is His body and "God the soul" of all, it is evident that we have before us a vast field of thought.

In the childhood of our race we were satisfied to believe that as man was made in the image of God, God must be in the image of man. While this statement is in itself correct, yet it comes so far short of the great truth involved, that the early church was caused to draw a sharp distinction between what is called the work of God and the work of nature. It is a sad commentary on the advancement of our race that even now, we hear professed scientists say that God has nothing to do with some great convulsion of nature, because it can be traced to some natural cause. It is just at this point that infidelity is growing most rank. But when we accept the fact that God is the Soul and Creative-Power active in all that is, we have laid a foundation for reasonable, orderly thought.

Starting, then, from this, the fundamental truth, to search for the image of man in the great universal whole, we are led back to a line of thought that, because of the prevailing materialism and ignorance, has been for the last century in great disrepute. We refer to the recognition of the influence of the heavenly bodies over our earth and over man.

Sometime in the long-forgotten past some one discovered what the Greeks denominated the "circle of animals"—the zodiac. The term circle of animals, although displaying a partial ignorance of the real nature of the thing named, yet indicates a great truth—a truth discerned by seers and sages of all past ages down to our own time; notably among whose names stand those of Plato and Swedenborg, who saw what they called the "Grand Man of the Heavens."

In 1887 the author of the present volume published a work entitled Solar Biology. The special object of this work is to delineate character from the date of birth of a person. In this work it is proved, as accurately as any scientific fact can be proved, that a person is dominated and characterized by that function of the human body represented by the particular sign of the zodiac in which the earth was at the time of his birth. The Apostle Paul seemed to have a conception of this fact when he said:

"The body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; it is not therefore not of the body. And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; it is not therefore not of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members each one of them in the body, even as it pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now they are many members, but one body. . . . And whether one member suffereth, all the members suffer with it; or one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members each in his part." (I. Cor. xii. 12-27.)

To make a statement of the fact without attempting to prove its verity, let us assume that surrounding our sun there is what may be called twelve oceans of etheric life, separated, one from another, by well-defined lines, and that these twelve oceans contain qualities represented by the twelve functions of the human organism, beginning with Aries, the head of the Grand Man; followed by Taurus, the neck; Gemini, the hands and arms; Cancer, the breast; Leo, the heart; Virgo, the stomach and digestive system; Libra, the reins, and so on through the twelve functions of the human organism.

Through these twelve oceans all the planets of the Solar System pass in their voyage around their parent sun. A planet and the particular ocean in which it is immersed reciprocally contribute their qualities—the ocean of life receives from the planet and the planet, in turn, from the ocean of life, its people being dominated by the qualities of that ocean. With the aid of Solar Biology any one can prove these statements to be facts.

We find that around our earth there is also a zodiac, whose influence governs the physical body and its senses. This zodiac is separate from the zodiac of the sun and in its exact image, with the single exception that the order of the earth's zodiac is a reversal of the sun's zodiac. For illustration: When the earth is on that side of the sun represented by the sign Aries, and the moon is on a line with the sun and earth it is new in the sign Aries of the earth's zodiac, thus showing that, in relation to each other, the two zodiacs are in reversed order. Again, the earth being in the sign Aries, the moon is full—that is, it is on a line with the sun and the earth, and on the side of the earth opposite to the sun—when it is in the sign Libra. (See accompanying diagram.)

We particularize in regard to this matter because it is an important truth in psychology that this reversal is indicated in the fact that every truth received by the individual through the senses is reversed to the mind. This accounts for the great perversion of truth; no one can realize to what extent truth is perverted until he has developed to a point where the spiritual consciousness begins to dominate the personality. We have diverged, however, from the direct line of our thought—though, perhaps, necessarily.

We have brought to your mind a picture of the Grand Man of the Heavens in the position of the fetus in the womb, with head and feet together, surrounding the sun, and another surrounding the earth. And we have also hinted at the fact that in the movements of these heavenly bodies, creation is carried on; that each of the various members of the human family, created at the different periods of the year, is the embodiment of a specific function of the Grand Man of the Heavens. But each of these persons is also the embodiment of the qualities of the entire zodiac or has these qualities represented in his organism. He is dominated, however, by the quality of that particular function in which he was born, for, as we have seen, each of the twelve oceans represents one of the twelve functions that constitute the human organism.

As, therefore, the heavenly bodies are the mind-organs of the Infinite, engaged in the work of creation by means of their constant revolution around their center, and as man is the product of those creative energies, being in the exact image of the zodiac, it is evident that, in the words of the Scriptures, "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him."

This fact gave rise to the following poem by a modern poet:

"Twelve Angels rule the planetary scheme;

Each hath an orb; one Deity supreme

Is their indwelling life; they bow the knee

To one God-man who rules immensity.

Twelve angel nymphs in air, earth, sea and fire

Dwell with a viewless and unnumbered choir,

Ruling the elements; twelve oceans roll

Their light waves from the one Creative Soul;

Twelve archetypal spheres rule time and space;

Twelve primal splendors shine from God's own face."

THE ORGANIZED IMAGE

We have been considering the expression of the creative image in its material and earth-mind manifestation—a manifestation which had its beginning when man was formed. But the image in its expression by no means stops here—this is but its beginnings. In order that there may be an organism capable of expressing Divinity, there must be an aggregation of such individual bodies.

As the apostle has stated in the foregoing quotation, there must be the bringing together of a Body of people whose minds have sufficiently developed to realize something of their Source and to desire to come into perfect unison, oneness, with the Mind and Will that formed them.

Man, as we find him at the beginning of this the Twentieth Century, has his whole interest, desire and thought centered upon self—me and mine. Thus he is held as a part separated from the Grand Body, the Body of Humanity. As the animal world, he is struggling with his fellows, fighting for his own supremacy. Consequently, labor, sorrow, and death appear on every side, arising from the same cause which produces disease in the individual body, namely, every organ is out of harmony with the body-general. Therefore the whole body of humanity is diseased from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, every organ and function warring against the other members and against the fountains of immortality—the Source of being.

Thus death reigns supreme and will so reign until the formation of the Body of the Christ, vaguely referred to in the quotation from Paul. Each individual is not in himself an organ or function of the Body of humanity. Were this true, the race would be constituted of but twelve individuals. On the contrary, each individual is but a molecule in the Grand Body, and each of these molecules finds its place in its own function, and thus the body is formed of a multitude of members.

All living bodies are composed of an aggregation of molecules, each a living organism with a separate, yet united, consciousness, but governed by a common law of attraction, which causes it to unite, become one, with the general body. Now the body of the individual man, constructed of these molecules becomes, in turn, a molecule in a greater and grander aggregation which is called in Revelation "the Body of the Christ."

The question arises here: How can there be an aggregation of men and women so united as to constitute one body, a united whole? Such a condition would certainly be a normal one in view of the constitution of the race, but a survey of the plane next beyond us answers the question more fully. The indications to which we refer—active upon the plane next beyond the masses—are these:

Here and there scattered through the world are men and women who have reached a degree of sensitiveness that enables them to feel the mental state of a person as soon as they come in contact with him, and immediately there arises within them a feeling either of attraction or repulsion—a loving sympathy or a painful impression of something poisonous to their nature. This is but the beginning, an anticipating, of a plane of existence which must necessarily obtain in the order of progressive unfoldment and refinement of the race.

Earth's greatest teacher used the vine as a symbol of the formation of this body:

"I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: . . . If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered."

The apostle takes up the thought expressed in this quotation and speaks of the wild olive-branch being grafted upon the fruitful tree, and God through the prophet uses like symbolism. Not to multiply words, but that we may at once get at the central thought, we ask you to bear this symbolism in mind. The methods of being grafted into the true vine are referred to by the Christ in John xv. 1.

When men have been born from above and their soul-powers developed to where they begin to live from God as did the Lord Christ, their minds will be illuminated and they will see that the Spirit of God is one and that all who live from the Spirit of God must necessarily be one. This oneness is brought to light in Revelation, chapters i., vii., xiv., xxi. and xxii.

In order to bring this thought more clearly to mind, let us picture 144,000 persons, or 288,000 men and women, who have become so developed in soul consciousness that each individual feels the feelings of every other and of the Body in toto, and not only feels but is as vividly conscious of the thoughts of the individual members of the Body and of the Body in its entirety as he is of his own thoughts. Would not this be a condition that would virtually do away with the separate individuality of the members of the Body? Would it not—we ask you to consider the question—constitute all the members of that Body as perfectly one, as are the molecules that compose our own organism, in their unity forming the individual man?—It would most assuredly.

Now if this Body of 144,000 members is to be constituted of the most highly developed men and women of our planet, we should naturally look for the grandest aggregation of mind that the world has ever known. Moreover, we must consider each and every member of that Body as living the regenerate life, conserving and storing up within himself (or herself) all the vitality that is generated by the body through a normal sex action; thus, not only increasing his normal capacities many, many fold, but, through the fires of the Divine Life active within him, transmuting, refining and intensifying the elements of his own body, increasing his sensitiveness, intensifying his sensibilities, and becoming more and more vividly conscious of his dependence upon every other member of the Body for the perfection of his own individual organism.

It is evident, therefore, that such a Body of people would be so drawn together by common sympathy that each member would be satisfied and happy in the fact that he is able to be his own normal self, supplemented and completed by the normal action of every other individual. Thus, in the light of absolute truth, disagreement or inharmony would be impossible in such a Body. Now this is the Body brought to light in the twenty-first chapter of Revelation.

But this is only the human side of it. The prophet seeing the ultimation of this, the Divine Purpose, exclaims, "Yahveh is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him." (Hab. ii. 20.) And the apostle particularized the same thought when he said, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"

As we have had occasion to say in former chapters—and shall more fully elaborate in the chapters that are to follow—the methods of life which are to bring men and women to this ultimate, all tend to the one central object of uniting their consciousness to God, their Heavenly Father. Herein is found the perfection of the symbolism chosen by the Lord Jesus—the symbol of the vine—for, as spiritual beings, men came out from God, and to attain this ultimate they must return to God, return to a conscious oneness with their Source. They must live from God as literally as the vine lives from the earth, air, and sun-light. And as the same sap that nourishes the vine, nourishes all its branches and its fruitage, so the Body as to its individual members—being united with the Christ ("the true vine") and he with the Father—will be partakers of the same life, the same Spirit. The mind and will (Spirit) of God will be the mind of all the Body in the same direct way that a common life unites all the molecules of our individual bodies.

Let us now sum up the dominant thought of this work:

This Grand Body has evolved from the lowest form of life to the most highly developed men and women of our planet, these have increased, refined, and intensified their faculties many fold; add to these highly developed mind-qualities, the mind-qualities gained by a perfect unity with the whole Body of mind; illuminate such a Body of mind by a perfect unity with the mind-currents of Yahveh Elohim, and you have man with the "dominion" over the whole earth, the finished creation, the image of the "God Man of the Heavens"—"The Image of God."

This is a brief summing up of the history of the journey of the soul from God and its return to God—to his [mage.

Can you imagine the power of this Body upon our planet? Do you wonder that in the Revelation given to Saint John, it is said that they shall be "kings and priests unto God and reign on the earth"? This Body will be the God of the planet, even as Elohim is the God of the Solar System.

Herein is the fulfilment of the purpose declared in the beginning—to make man in the Divine Image; for the Image of Yahveh Elohim can be perfected upon the earth only through the organization, the fitting together, of such a Body. And constituting that Body "Yahveh Elohim," or giving it a right to the name "Yahveh," means that every individual member in his (or her) consciousness has united himself to the God of the universe, in the same direct way that the members of that Eternal Brotherhood—that has existed in all worlds from all time—have united their lives with Yahveh the God of all systems of worlds; and they are conscious in and of him, in other words, conscious that they are merely a mind-center produced by Yahveh, through which he finds expression.

The next step in the developing of our race and planet, is to be the gathering and constructing of such a Body as we have pictured, and this Body will be but one mind-organ of the Infinite. But we are encroaching upon our chapter on "The Image and Likeness," wherein this subject will be further discussed.

CHAPTER 17. THE LIKENESS OF GOD

THE OFFICE OF THE CHRIST.

The mystery of the ages is involved in the consummating of the purpose of God—to make man in his image and likeness, in the preparing of man to become heir of God and joint-heir with Christ. In order to obtain a clear understanding of this subject, it becomes necessary to consider:

1. What is man?

2. How man is brought into the Divine Likeness. In the effort to answer the question

WHAT IS MAN?

it is necessary to consider the earth as it appears to our physical senses, because it is a reality to all physical existence. We find that man is limited to his planet; he lives from it, and without it he would. immediately perish—man cannot live without food, water, and air. We find, too, that if the brain is diseased, the man becomes insane, and the change is as radical as if he were another being. This is evidence to the materialistic mind that man has no life beyond animal life, and this is true in itself and is in accord with the teachings of Christ, for he said to those around him, "Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world." Thus he drew the line of distinction very clearly.

Again, he said concerning his life, and the life of men, "My time is not yet come: but your time is alway ready," thus emphatically implying that during the existence of the "carnal man," upon earth, he is subject to accident, disease and death, so that he may pass out of the body at any time.

In order to rise superior to such conditions there must be something superadded, to which Jesus referred in the words: "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves," and to those who objected, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" he explained this eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood by saying, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." Thus he did away with the thought that the bread, or wafer, and the wine are the actual flesh and blood of the Lord; and left us to the indubitable conclusion that the eating of the wafer and the drinking of the wine, are simply symbolism, a memorial of the fulness of times when that which is symbolized will be realized.

But the great point under consideration is the emphatic utterance, "Ye have not life in yourselves." Has man no life in himself? Christ said in another place, "For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the son to have life in himself," implying that the son did not have life in himself, until it was given to him by the Father.

Evidences are abundant all around us that man has no life in himself, that he is dependent for his existence, as we have said, upon the food he eats, the water he drinks, and the air he breathes. And yet this is not all the life that animates men and animals, the spirit of the mundane is the life of all creatures. We have seen in former chapters that the planet earth was created by a word, that all is spirit, mind; this being so, all there is of man comes from the creative-word active in the earth.

Each world is a separate thought of God. A man thinks of his office, then of his farm, and each is separate from the other, and so it is with God's thoughts in the creation of worlds.

In the thought of creating the planet earth and man upon it, was the potentiality to make a world make itself, the potentiality of all creative-law; so that, when we speak of the spirit of the mundane, we refer to this one, definite, thought of the Creative Mind, which involves the process of bringing man out from the invisible and passing him through all the experiences of an earthly life—generation, labor, sorrow and death.

The fact that the Holy Spirit is separate from the earth is set forth in the teachings of the Scriptures. Man is there spoken of as having been separated from God, as being purely of the earth, earthy, of the spirit of the mundane, the creative spirit. It is there shown that he must be redeemed from the power of the mundane—in order to have any life in himself he must be made partaker of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that is above all. (See John iii. 31.)

From these conclusions it may be inferred that there is no immortality in man's existence. This is both true and untrue, for we read, "I know that what God doeth it shall be forever; nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it: and God doeth it, that man should fear before him."

As God created man, therefore man exists forever, and the very earth that he lives on, the very spirit of the mundane from which his thoughts are derived, is of God, is of Spirit, but it is one thought of the Infinite Mind—to create this world and man in His likeness. This thought of creating the world—the mundane—is separate from all the other thoughts of the Infinite, in the same way that one of our thoughts is separate from all other thoughts, or is devoted to a specific object.

It is a well-known fact that when a man's mind is centered and he works on one idea at a time, he is more efficient than when he tries to grasp too much at once, for then he accomplishes little. The same is true in regard to this earthly sphere. In order that man may go on developing and fulfilling the object for which he was created, he is limited to his surroundings and to his earthly needs, and he must necessarily be limited and bound to this existence until he has finished growing and unfolding and has reached the condition where he feels the need of a higher life, a superior consciousness.

We have seen that reincarnation is a law, that the real man, the soul which is made up of the memories of a lifetime, survives the body and returns by reincarnating until it is sufficiently mature to recognize God, its Father. Here seems to be a direct contradiction—man dies and the memory-body is reincarnated and yet man does not remember his former life.

That the memory-body does not die, however, but is reincarnated and persists in man, has been brought to light by the hypnotist; for a very illiterate person is frequently found, when under hypnotic influence, to be highly educated. The interior individual has had a superior education, for he is able to speak different languages and to converse in the most perfect diction; but when the hypnotic spell is removed, the consciousness returns to the same illiteracy. The explanation of this is found in the fact of reincarnation, that is, there is a memory-body latent within the personality which is incapable of uniting with the external consciousness.

We have seen that man has no life in himself, and even this memory-body has no life in itself, but lives from spirit. It must, however, live from the spirit of its own sphere; that is to say, a stream cannot rise above its source, neither can the memory-body, or the physical body, do more than to act from its own qualities or from the sphere from which its own qualities have been derived. Now, as all that constitutes the memory-body has been derived from the experiences of a material existence in the physical world, it must continue to exist from that world, which means that it must continue to live from and express the spirit of the mundane, and as there is nothing in the spirit of the mundane that has any power to perpetuate the physical structure, therefore there is no immortality in the individual consciousness, for man is of the earth, earthy.

The work of the spirit of the mundane is unfinished work; it is merely preparatory, or preliminary, to the ultimate purpose of creation. The earth is a thought expressed for a purpose, and the purpose, or trend of the creative activities, is to make man in "The Image of God" and in "The Likeness of God."

We have presented man as a creature of earth, subject to all the vicissitudes of an earthly existence, to all the changes that are constantly taking place on the earth; a creature subject to all the laws governing an earthly existence, without any capacity at his command to perpetuate himself. He has no life in himself, but is dependent for life upon the planet and upon the spirit of the mundane; he is carried forward by the work of evolution, generation after generation. He has a free-will, it is true; he is free to act his real nature; he can get the will to do nothing more, nothing less. So is every animal free, but every creature must act in accordance with its nature. It is accepted by many psychologists that man cannot even think that which is not in himself; he cannot think a thought, the qualities of which are not within.

Jesus often expressed the same thought, "He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God;" and again, "But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." Here Jesus seemed to carry out the idea that they were of the earth, earthy, and could think only the thoughts of earth. Again, he said to Nicodemus, "If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?" The earthly things of which Christ was speaking were in relation to the rebirth, the being born from above, for he said, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." Having viewed man as of the earth, earthy, we come now to a consideration of

HOW MAN IS BROUGHT INTO THE DIVINE LIKENESS

That man has nothing directly to do with being begotten from above, is clearly brought out in the text last quoted. We merely recognize that the wind blows. We know not why it blows, where it comes from, or where it goes.

When man through growth and development has reached the point where he is capable of receiving a higher influx from the Spirit, the Spirit flows into him as naturally as the flower gathers to itself the added qualities that make up the blossom, or as the fruit-tree gathers the qualities that make the luscious fruit—perhaps through an unsavory quality of sap that nourishes the tree. This, in vegetable life, is a manifestation of that wondrous law of being begotten from above. A wonderful metamorphosis takes place in the tree when, after it has grown year after year and has reached maturity, it puts forth beautiful blossoms, a thing never known of it before. The blossoms drop their petals and the fruit appears, which finally ripens and becomes pleasant to the eye and to the taste and is good for food.

So man has been growing, generation after generation, throughout the cycles of the world's existence, until now isolated individuals put forth the blossom of spiritual desire—a blossom which is by virtue of the inflowing of an added quality, a quality that did not exist in man before.

What did Jesus mean by declaring, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves"? A question he partially answers by saying, "The words that I have spoken unto you, are spirit, and are life"—as much as to say, That is what I am talking about; not the flesh, not the blood, but the spirit, for "the flesh profiteth nothing." Here the mystery deepens. Why does not man become a partaker of the Holy Spirit long before he does? Is it because the Spirit is not present?—The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, fills all things, all space. There is no space in the whole universe that is not filled with the Holy Spirit; but we cannot touch Spirit; to Spirit, man is but a shadow.

That which is in a lower sphere is always but a shadow to that which is in a higher sphere. Therefore, though the higher is all-pervading, it can never touch the lower except through intermediaries. Like can touch like only, and the consciousness can be conscious only of that which is like itself.

As we move about the Spirit passes through us as if we were not, and there is nothing in man to give him even a consciousness of the existence of Spirit. Consequently some of the brightest minds of the day are denying the existence of God and Spirit and of everything beyond their own conscious life.

Because of this law that like can touch like only, it was necessary that God should send to earth one who had gained the right to be called Yahveh Elohim—one of the masters that had passed beyond the need of a physical body—to take on the flesh of man. Paul said, "he took on him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren." Having been clothed upon with flesh, but being a master in his real essence and substance, he knew God, Spirit. He knew the Holy Spirit from past experience. He was begotten of that Holy Spirit. He was a son of God and God's Spirit was the substance of his being. He was able, therefore, absolutely to control the physical body, to inspire the Spirit of the Father, the Holy Spirit, and passing it through the brain-organs, he clothed the Spirit with the substance of the physical mind.[13]

In order to make the Spirit of God accessible to the vital currents and mentality of man, it became essential that a spiritual being clothe himself with a body of flesh, and by the power of the Spirit within him, transmute the flesh and fit it to become the clothing of the spiritual germ. As a seed clothes the vital germ and fits it to be planted in the earth, so Christ fitted the spiritual substance to be planted in his people. Man could never have known the things of God unless there had been such a mediator, such a nature, to stand immediately between the Spirit, God, and the brain-power of the race, so that man should be enabled to partake of the things of God and to materialize them, so to speak, into his fleshly substance—thus giving them clothing like those things that the human mind is accustomed to handling.

Certain experiences in modern life suggest this law; for instance, a person who is spiritually minded falls asleep and during the sleep state he dreams concerning spiritual things. The dream interests him intensely and it is so clear and so well defined that when he awakens he thinks he shall be able to recall it all to mind, but he finds that he cannot recall any of the particulars, the powers of re-collection cannot touch them. He feels the influence of the dream and seems to have drawn in a certain substance, but yet the mind cannot touch it. What does this mean?

It means simply that the soul-consciousness has become almost, but not quite, able to control the physical consciousness. When the physical is dormant, the soul can think from the soul-world, but when the physical comes into activity, the qualities of the substance of which these thoughts are formed are too subtile for the action of the brain, and therefore they cannot be called into the brain. They can not obey the call of the desire-mind.

Jesus came a member of that world of immortality, a world where the inhabitants live from the substance of the Spirit. "He took on him the seed of Abraham;" he lived in that fleshly body, he thought in it, controlled it and thus qualitated it by the power of the Spirit. He made for that Spirit a covering of the transmuted substance of flesh and blood, thus clothing the Spirit of God—making it a seed.

We plant a kernel of wheat, composed apparently of very material substance, and it springs forth and grows. The material substance dies and disintegrates; but the life that is in it, that subtile, invisible, intangible something, gathers to itself like qualities and makes for itself a new body.

So the Christ came that he might take of the flesh and the blood of man to create a seed whose substance was spirit. This seed was planted in his people on the day of Pentecost, and like the kernel of wheat (See John xii. 24) it grew, matured and multiplied and will continue to grow until the fulness of time comes, when the "harvest of the world" is gathered in—the harvest of the first planting of Christ, the Seed-man. (See Mark iv. 26-29.)

Thus Christ generated in the world, through the unity of Spirit and flesh, a quality that did not exist therein until his time—a superior quality belonging to a plane next beyond the plane of creative-life, or the spirit of the mundane. As the prophet said of him, "He shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of Yahveh shall prosper in his hand." (Is. liii. 10.)

The force of the prophet's words, "He shall see his seed," was strengthened when he said, "More are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith Yahveh;" for ultimately more will be the seed of the Christ-life—the union of Spirit with matter that took place in his body, by which sons and daughters of God are born—than the spirit of generation.

Again, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit"—that which was begotten in the Christ was spirit clothed with the substance of flesh. This subtile element of the thought-qualities of the Christ, planted in the race, in the lives of men and women, being a quality purer, higher, holier and therefore more potential, than had before existed in the race, made the spiritual potency of man more tenacious. Through this potency, and through this only, can immortality be attained; through it, and through it only, can mind be formed in man that will be able to know spirit and, at the same time, to know the things of earth. Through it man, recognizing the Father, will unite with the Spirit of God, and become Immanuel, God with us, or God in us, God manifest in the flesh—"The Likeness of God."

CHAPTER 18. THE LIKENESS OF GOD

THREE STEPS.

In the preceding chapter we viewed man as dependent upon the earth and being "of the earth, earthy," and also in some of his relations to the Divine Likeness. We shall now consider some of the methods by which man is raised from the animal, earthy state into the spiritual; for nothing in the universe is effected without method involving a purpose—let it be the purpose of the Divine Mind or a purpose active in the human mind. Nothing is accomplished without conforming to natural law.

In the present chapter we call attention to "Three Steps" or distinct methods, by which man ascends to a higher plane of existence—that of "The Likeness of God." Man has nothing to do with these methods, that is, he has no direct control over them—a great truth which the prophet saw when, in his devotion to God, he exclaimed: "Thou hast wrought all our works in us."

The three steps are: (1) Inspiring or indrawing from the creative forces. (2) The incorporating of  the paschal lamb—the Divine Word. (3) Man's rebirth or the birth of the spirit-child.

FIRST STEP

The First Method is in pursuance of the law of natural inspiration, active in all creation. In accordance with this law the creature when it has so developed as to feel the need of a higher state of unfoldment, begins to inspire from the all-fountain, the source of its life. Need produces desire and the sincere desire of the heart is prayer; so that when man has reached a point in his evolutionary unfoldment where he can go no further, there springs up within him a yearning, longing desire for something undefined, unknown. The soul prays and as he prays the answer comes, and there flows into the man an added higher quality.

It must be remembered that all inspiration, all inflowing life, even in the growth of the plant, is governed by the law manifest in mind as desire, causing the intelligence to feel the need of that which is desired. Without this feeling of need there can be no indrawing and incorporating into the organism of the higher element, there can be no inspiration from God. The first method, therefore, is the natural indrawing from the creative forces.

SECOND STEP

The Second Method is the incorporating of the emanation or inherent substance of the word spoken by the Lord Christ. God created the world by a word, therefore wherever the Spirit forms a word it gives to that word life and power to cause action.

No doubt each one who reads this, has met at least one person whose thoughts were high, pure and grand, and while talking to the person you undoubtedly received something that was elevating, something that was added to you that you did not possess before—something, at least, of which you were not before conscious. There are qualities emanating from the thoughts of individuals that have an influence upon the atmosphere which surrounds them. This explains the mystery embodied in the words of the Lord Christ before quoted, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves." . . . "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you, are spirit and are life." Mark you, they are spirit, which is one thing, and they are life, which is another thing. The words are spirit because of their potentiality; they are life because they enter into the organism to which they are sent and begin the work of creating like spirit and thought.

Again Christ asks: "How can one enter into the house of the strong man, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house." The strong man is the animal or natural man without the spirit of God. He is armed with all the requisites for self-preservation and for maintaining that which he esteems his goods; but when the spirit and life that were in the words spoken by the Christ enter into the strong man, they begin gradually to bind him by getting control of the passions and wrong desires, gradually winding the cord of spiritual desire around the old man, binding the passions, appetites and evil desires, supplanting them by the desires of the Spirit, until finally the spiritual man becomes strong enough to take control of the animal man, then we say of him he is converted. He has made his decision and perhaps declaration that he will thenceforth live for God and for righteousness.

This method is symbolized by the eating of the Passover Lamb. If you read the twelfth chapter of Exodus, you will observe that the children of Israel were told to take a lamb for an house and that they were to eat all of it, "his head with his legs and with the inwards thereof," and they were to let nothing remain until the morning and that which was not eaten was to be burned with fire. They were to eat it with their shoes on their feet and their staves in their hands, in readiness and in haste to go out from the old conditions—Egypt.

Mark you, there is some reason for the emphasis made in regard to their eating all of the lamb. At the institution of the "Lord's Supper" Jesus the Christ used words that have not been understood by the translators of the New Testament. When he handed the cup to his disciples he said to them, "Drink you out of it all this for it is the blood of me," and likewise when he gave them the bread he said, "Eat ye all of it;" that is, he impressed the thought that was symbolized by the Passover, that the bread and wine were his flesh and blood and that they were to eat "all of it." Now, hold this thought in mind and let us look further.

Before his crucifixion, Christ commanded his disciples to remain in Jerusalem, in prayer and supplication, until the day of Pentecost, and we read that on that day the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples, appearing to them as "cloven tongues of fire;" that "there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven," and that every man heard the disciples speak in his own language. This shows that the Holy Spirit had descended upon and into them, and that they were speaking from the Spirit and not from the intellect.

Whence came this Spirit and what did this mean? We read that after the resurrection of Jesus he ascended into heaven. His physical body was not permitted to see corruption, but it was taken away. Where did it go?

The answer is found in the symbolic story of the Passover Lamb that was all eaten by the children of Israel; in other words, the lamb entered into the body of Israel. This was symbolic of the fact that after the physical body of Christ was taken into heaven, by the fires of spirit it was transmuted to Spirit (God is a consuming fire), and sent into his faithful followers on the day of Pentecost and they—symbolically—ate all of the body of Christ. As the kernel of wheat is planted in the ground, so all of the transmuted body of Christ was planted in his disciples (Israel ate all of the Passover Lamb), and since that time it has been growing, expanding and developing. Some of our churches have recognized the fact that the children of those who have been begotten from above are as much the children of God as are their parents, in other words, that the rightful heritage of the church is in the blood, the offspring, which is in itself a truth.

Thus Christ planted in his people the qualities that he had generated and materialized into his fleshly form; and when they were first planted, they were, so to speak, focalized in the few, enabling them to raise the dead, to heal the sick, and to do the things that Christ had done. As time went on, however, men lost faith in God, and in the power of his Spirit, and as they lost faith the Spirit was gradually repelled from them. But the fulness of time is now at hand, the fruitage of the Lord's planting is ripe. The mass of the people in the churches is repelling the Spirit that was in Christ. The Holy Spirit is again being concentrated in the few who will constitute the first ripe fruit of the earth, the 144, 000.

The two methods given, the first two, are insufficient in themselves to bring into manifestation the sons of God, made in his Likeness. They are merely preparatory to the third and final method of creating man in the "Likeness of God."

THIRD STEP

The Third Method, that of being born from above is yet to take form in the mind of man—its greatness, its grandeur, its absolute reality have never entered into the mind of man. Jesus said, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit;" and he added, "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born anew [from above]." He here impresses the fact that flesh cannot generate spirit, and that spirit cannot generate flesh, but that every kind produces its own kind, that like itself.

Many times throughout the Scriptures men are called sons of God, and John says, "Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." (I. John iii. 2.) John here says that we shall be like the Christ, who was born from above: he was conceived and born from the Spirit. Therefore, we can be like him only when we have been born from above, as he was born from above. Christ emphatically said that that which is born of the flesh is the fleshly man.

We know how the fleshly man is brought into existence, but how we are to be born of the Spirit is a mystery that until recently has been hidden from humanity; and even now it can only be put into words which perhaps many will doubt and but few will believe. Notwithstanding, we have faith that those who are of God will hear God's words, that they who have the spirit of truth within, will believe the truth when expressed.

This truth of being born from above may be briefly stated as follows:

We know as men and women what generation means. How came generation to have existence?—Was it not a part of the creative word? and he that spoke the word could put nothing therein that was not in himself. Therefore there must be in God, the Creator, something answering to generation on earth; as the old philosopher so well said, "as below, so above," and everything that has an existence in the experiences of human life, has something answering to it in the Cause whence man originated.

We have seen in former chapters that the Elohim consist of mature souls that have come into the form of the heavenly temple, an organized Body of perfected souls which most assuredly consists of both men and women; for, as the apostle says, "neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man, in the Lord." "God is Love," which is a constructive force, and we are told that "Elohim is a consuming fire"—fire is action, activity. Without activity there is death, and the creative, or constructive function is the activity of the life (love) forces.

We find that when the creative or sex function dies, death soon comes to the body, for through the sex all life on the planet originated and is perpetuated; and that principle in the heavens answering to the sex—from which sex in the form it is known on the earth has been derived—has been the fountain and source from which all creation has sprung. Therefore, we are forced to conclude that there is even in the heavens, and in the heaven of heavens, a love-passion that is pure spirit, active between the positive and negative forces, between the two spiritual entities from which men and women have derived their existence. If this is true, then, in the activities of that love, a spirit-child is formed; and being pure spirit, it is yet without experience, it must learn wisdom, gain knowledge and develop power—in short, it must grow as any child until it has reached not only the image of its father and mother, but has attained to their likeness.

It is impossible for us to explain further the order of the heavens, from which is derived the rebirth, unless we give that which has been given to us: We knew a man who was living the regenerate life, controlling the creative forces in himself, turning these forces toward the brain for spiritual and intellectual use. One evening at a social gathering he made the acquaintance of a lady whom he had never seen before and who was living the regenerate life, for, through inherent tendencies she had an abhorrence of the sex relations and had conserved all the life generated in the body, and was in her real organism a regenerate woman.

During the evening the subject of phrenology was discussed, and, this man having had some experience in reading character from the form of the head, he was asked to place his hands on this lady's head and give a delineation of character. On doing so, he found that her head was as a flame of fire. Soon after he realized that there had entered into him a new life-force, which rushed through his body like a cyclone. When he retired at night this life concentrated in the brain, and by the power of this life he could see the interior of his own brain, and he saw there a flame of white light. The muscles of the brain were in travail as a woman in childbirth, and he saw taking shape in the brain, by the working of the muscles, a diminutive human form, being shaped from the head down to the feet, and when the feet were formed, the little spirit-form took flight, and his whole being rested.[14] In his own language, he was impregnated by the life emanations from this woman's head and he brought forth a child, a spirit-form, through the action of his brain.

This is at least an illustration of the order of the regeneration or love-life in the heavens. In the heavens spirit and mind are all there are. Mind is the thought-former; spirit or life is the cause of the thought-forming and is the substance out of which the thought is formed. Thus in the heavens spirit-children are begotten of love and mind, life and use. In the heavens function is servant and not master; therefore the function for animal production does not exist in the spiritual production, for, keep in mind, that God by a word, a thought formed in the mind and sent out by the will, created all things.

It may be quite a shock to the idealism of some of our readers to think that even in heaven spiritual children are born, but they are conceived in mind and born from the life of the Spirit through the brain. Should there not be a use for that divine love that is perfect? and is there not a use, a purpose, a cause for the creation of man and for his being given an existence on the earth? Creation sprang from the unity and activity of Divine Love and Wisdom. There is no activity without use, and no use without accomplishment. All nature, wherever the mind turns, is in action, and the higher the realm the more intense is the action. Love is the action of life, or life in motion, and "God is love," and God's love links him with all his creation. There can be no evolution without involution—that which is involved is that which evolves, develops and grows. Therefore, it is in the Divine Purpose to "bring many sons unto God," and these sons are begotten of the Holy Spirit in those who have gained the attainment to be justly called Yahveh Elohim.

Yahveh Elohim by the prophet said, "For thy Maker is thy husband; Yahveh of hosts is his name: and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; the God of the whole earth shall he be called." (Isaiah liv. 5.) Read also Jeremiah iii. 14, and Ezekiel xxiii.

In these references the declaration is unequivocal that God's chosen people are regarded as his wife. You will notice in the experience given that it was the man's brain that was impregnated by the woman, and that the man brought forth the spirit- child. God declared himself to be the husband of his physical Israel—not of woman but of man and woman.

We are told in another place that "God is love." The expression of the feminine as we know her on earth, is love, and the expression of the masculine as we know him on earth, is mind, but the indication from revelation is that this order is reversed in the heavens.

There seem to be shadows of the condition in the heavens flitting over the inner consciousness of the world of humanity at the present time, causing those called "advanced thinkers" to talk about woman being superior to man—that she must lead man into the higher life. These are merely inverted shadows that flit over the consciousness of those who are without knowledge; they assume that the physical organism of the woman, with the mind arising therefrom, is to be master and leader, but the divine order is expressed in the quotation: "Thy Maker is thy husband; Yahveh of hosts is his name."

God recognizes the individual as neither man nor woman, but the statement is emphatic that the man and the woman are one, whose consciousness becomes to the Spirit an individualized consciousness. And the development and refinement of the body enable the body, in turn, to know the mind of the Spirit and to be conscious of all that of which the Spirit is conscious.

We have said that the action of life—the unity of love and wisdom—results in the production of organic forms, and that by the intensity of divine love and the order of supreme wisdom or mind, children are born of the Spirit.

But in order that they may have experience, development, growth and unfoldment, it is necessary that they have an earthly experience. Earth is intended as a schoolroom of the Spirit, and those who attain a divine degree of purity and holiness become the wife, the temple of this spirit, or Godchild.

This spirit-child begotten of the Holy Spirit, born in the heavens, descends into the organism of man or woman and grows, gaining knowledge, both spiritual and intellectual; and in its growth it passes on from plane to plane of consciousness carrying with it all that constitutes the consciousness of the man or the woman in whom it dwells; whose consciousness becomes to the indwelling spirit-child an added consciousness.

Mere surface thought may suggest to the reader that "being born from above" leaves the individual man and woman out of the scheme of salvation and saves something that they are not; but we have carefully striven to impress upon the mind that we, as the plant, die daily, and live in the memories. The advent of this God-child does not destroy the memories, but rather creates an added consciousness in the individual, and makes that consciousness immortal.

Now, let us draw a conclusion from the foregoing: In God's love and wisdom creation proceeds, and in the process of creating sons of God, the spirit-child is conceived and born from the life of those in the heavens; and when man has so developed that the spirit-life that was in the Christ has possession and control of the will, impelling him to live the regenerate life, when the strong animal man is bound and the life of the man is consecrated and passive to the life of God—then the man is made a receptacle and fit temple for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, this spiritual child that enters in and grows and increases from the experiences of an earth-life, The consciousness and life of the individual become one with the consciousness and life of the spirit-child and of its Father, and thus man becomes the son of God—becomes Yahveh Elohim.

It is apparent, therefore, that the earthly life of man is a necessity to God as well as an opportunity to man, because it is a schoolroom for the sons of God, begotten in the heavens and matured upon the earth. For knowledge is gained from experience, and the experiences of the spiritual son of God must be gently conducted from the low state of human existence up to a consciousness of Yahveh Elohim, and a oneness with him.

CHAPTER 19. THE LIKENESS OF GOD

MAN BECOMING YAHVEH ELOHIM.

In Established Theology there have been two great points of conflict, between "Predestination" or "Foreordination," on the one hand, and what is known as "Free-Agency" or "Free-Will," on the other hand. But to quote from Robertson's Sermon's:

"All high truth is the union of two contradictories. Thus predestination and free-will are opposites; and the truth does not lie between these two, but in a higher reconciling of truth which leaves both true."

As we have suggested, man, like the animal world, cannot think or desire anything that is not in himself. He has perfect freedom of will so far as circumstances and capacity permit; but he can never get the will to be or to do that which is contrary to his nature. He must possess the quality before he can express it. The nature of the life-forces must be such as to produce desire and consequent action.

We read that it is God that worketh in us, "both to will and to do of his good pleasure." It is true that man is free to do what he wills, but God is our potter and we are the clay in his hands; and the methods by which man is lifted to a higher degree of existence are the methods by which God is creating within man his own divine nature and quality.

Predestination is established in God's purpose, announced in the beginning when he said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." This is his purpose and this purpose will be accomplished. All nature works together to force its accomplishment (Romans viii. 22, 23), but man is given a "free-will" to act within the limits of his knowledge and his capacity, and the qualities within him producing desires.

To explain how man becomes Yahveh Elohim, it is necessary to look again at the "Three Steps" for attaining "The Likeness of God."

The "First Step," inspiring or indrawing from the creative forces, is common to all flesh—the method in pursuance of the law, that as man unfolds, new conditions demand higher qualities, which naturally flow in, producing nobler desires, loftier aspirations, and purer thoughts.

The "Second Step," the incorporating of the paschal lamb or the Divine Word, leads to the next higher plane where the evolutionary forces have refined and qualitated the human organism to a degree which renders it capable of receiving an influx from that spirit-life that was generated and prepared for the world by the Lord Christ. Up to this time man has nothing directly to do with these steps, it is all of God. But when, as we have seen, this second quality is obtained, there begins in the man a struggle between the forces of the carnal or animal man, and the forces of the spiritual or divine man, and there are manifested in the man two natures, the one struggling against the other. This is the condition that has been active in the world since the time of the Christ.

At this point man's responsibility begins. While desire comes from development, yet that desire draws in, gathering to itself the spiritual qualities that were prepared through the Lord Jesus, which cause the individual to aspire to a higher and a holier life.

But there still remain active in the individual the appetites and passions of the flesh, causing a struggle between the two natures. Here begins the work of "overcoming," for by thought and by effort, man can coerce these appetites and passions and give special freedom and culture to the spiritual desires and aspirations, or he is free to neglect the developing of the spiritual qualities, even to the extent of crushing out from his own organism the divine life that God has given him, and thus he is lost, individually lost, in that he will leave the body without being able to carry with him a perpetual consciousness. He will then have to return in another organism, and finish that which he failed to do in his former incarnation.

But if a person turn his thoughts toward God and give his entire life and all his efforts to know and to do the will of God, suppressing the appetites, passions and evil desires of the flesh, then will the spirit of life from God grow and mature in him. Before this maturity can take place, however, we are brought face to face with the "Allegory of Eden," "the fall of man," and his redemption through Christ.

The "fall," we are informed, was carnal generation, or the spiritual man descending into and becoming party to the generation of the flesh. Christ taught of two ways, the way of generation and the way of regeneration. Generation was the old order of life, wherein were found labor, sorrow, experience (experimentation) and final death; then reincarnation, a repetition of the experience whereby knowledge and development were obtained—and again, death.[15] This has been the law and the order of life from the beginning of our history down to the present time, but we have reason to believe, that there is a people now in the world who have so far matured and through the evolutionary processes of nature have gotten so near the finished work, that they are able to grasp the knowledge and to apply the methods whereby they may become like God.

In this people is found the Christ-Spirit. They are now ready to take the "Third Step," namely, Man's re-birth, or the birth of the spirit-child. These are they who have received the word that Jesus sent forth to be preached to the world—it "has fallen into good ground ready to bring forth an hundred-fold." They have been partakers of the flesh and blood of Christ and they are now ready for the finishing work, ready to become one of the first begotten from above, the real sons and daughters of God.

In all cases where the spirit has become so strong that the whole desire and effort of the life of the person is toward a life of righteousness, and the mind has become awakened to an earnest desire to know the truth that he may live in harmony with it, a desire so strong that it has become paramount, over-ruling all other desires, then will take place the rebirth, then will be sent into the person the spiritual child, the son of God, a child begotten of divine love and divine mind, begotten by the action of these two forces in the spiritual soul of those who have become Yahveh Elohim.

When this newly begotten child enters the organism, the person is many times unconscious of the change. Sometimes, however, he is conscious that a new life from an unknown and invisible source has entered into him, and when it comes it thrills the whole being, passing through all the veins as a living, loving fire. It produces in the person a feeling that he belongs to and is linked with the heavens in a way that he has not been before.

We have mentioned the struggle that exists between the carnal man and the spiritual man after the second step is attained—a struggle well known to the Christian, since the time of Christ. But at this point, the third step, comes another, a deadlier struggle, a struggle between Generation on the one side and Regeneration on the other side. As the fierceness of any battle is measured by the strength of the opposing forces, so here a deadly conflict ensues, for marshalled ins battle array, on the one side is all Creation—the whole world of generation, visible and invisible; while on the other side is all Re-Creation—the Holy Spirit, and the great body of Yahveh Elohim in the heavens, aiding man in his final great struggle to become "Yahveh Elohim." This "step" or way is the "Narrow Way" so often spoken of by the Christ and referred to in II. Esdras vii. 6-10:

"There is another thing: A city is builded, and set upon a broad field, and is full of all good things; the entrance thereof is narrow, and is set in a dangerous place to fall, like as if there were a fire on the right hand, and on the left a deep water: and only one path between them both, even between the fire and the water, so small that there could but one man go there at once. If this city now were given unto a man for an inheritance, if he never shall pass the danger set before it, how shall he receive this inheritance? And I said, It is so, Lord. Then said he unto me, Even so also is Israel's portion."

The presence of the spirit-child in the organism at once causes the person to repel, to hate every act of the old generation, to stop all waste of the life fluids, and to consecrate all the life generated in the body to the developing of mind and soul powers, to the developing of the newly begotten child. He is now literally a son of God, and all that belongs to the Holy Spirit and to the state symbolized by the "Garden of Eden," is attractive to the heavenly guest that occupies the temple—the body.

This brings us to the question of individuality, for there has entered into the organism another soul, a spirit-child, from above, entirely distinct from the individual, and there begins a struggle between the two as to which shall become the real man, which shall survive and which shall be absorbed by the other. It is not, however, wholly a question of which shall be absorbed, because the carnal mind, or human soul, can never absorb the spiritual child, but the spiritual child can absorb and must absorb the human soul—not destroy it, but absorb it into or unite it with its own consciousness. This is a process that the human intellect is incapable of understanding only as experience has taught the individual along these lines.

It is as if the Spirit of God should come to you and say: "The way you are going will ultimate in death and you will be as if you had not been, and another spirit sent from God will enter into your body and will become the real man, one of the builders of the kingdom of God on earth. Are you willing thus to die, that your body and all that belongs to the physical desires, appetites, passions, loves, sympathies, may be absorbed and transformed by a spiritual consciousness, in order that the kingdom of God, the conditions that now exist in the heavens, may have a standing on the earth?"

When you are ready to answer this question in the affirmative, then the spiritual child that has entered the body will be given freedom of action, then will this higher intelligence begin to take control of every appetite, passion and desire, and will gradually refine them and transform them into the likeness of the Spirit. In other words, it will gradually carry the individual up out of the low state in which he is found after years of generation, labor, sorrow and death, and bring him back into the form ("The Image"), and cause him to express the quality that was in the mind of his heavenly Father ("The Likeness of God"), the Creator of all things. He will be fitted to dwell in the Eden of God, the new heaven and the new earth.

INDIVIDUALITY

We here meet a question that will arise in the minds of nearly all who read the foregoing: Does not this idea, in place of saving man, destroy him and save that which man is not? It appears so from a surface view; but when we remember the fact that man, like all growing vegetation, is constantly changing, taking on the new and throwing off the old, then we realize that this is not the destroying of the man, but is creating in him a center which only is immortal, which only can perpetuate his consciousness.

If you should retire at night and fall into a deep sleep and on awakening find that you had forgotten everything that you had ever known, what would be the difference between your condition and that of a child just born?—There would be no difference except in the development of the body and the mind organs, formed by the habit of the mind running in a certain channel, but so far as the individual man (consciousness) is concerned, your life would begin at that point. You would have an existence only from that point as a beginning. We think that this is clear to all who have given any thought to the subject.

This thought brings to our mind the fact that we live in our memories and we die in forgetting. The conditions that exist to-day will have passed away forever to-morrow, and new ones will have come in their place. Thus to-morrow we shall have died to much that exists to-day ("I die daily." I. Cor. xv. 31), and we shall live again in the new experiences, the new desires and aspirations that the occasion creates, and when these are of the earth, earthy, they continue to be as transient as the days, hours and minutes that succeed each other.

But when this newly begotten soul, this spiritual form, begotten of God, enters into the individual organism, his consciousness is then of his heavenly Father, and the absorption of all that belongs to the old man adds to, but does not take from the person, for all useful memories possessed by the person before the advent of the spiritual child, remain intact; but, as we have said, these memories will be carried up and refined, and this spirit-life, this spirit-child that lives from God and is conscious in the cause world, throws a new light upon all things. In that new light all the desires, as well as all the happenings of the past life, are seen, understood and comprehended, even as God sees and knows. Then wisdom and knowledge of God begin to take form in the individual, and as they take form and succeed in overcoming the hypnotized state of the human consciousness—which causes man to think and to feel that the material world, the physical externality, is all there is—facts in nature begin to be realized and things appear as they are.

Science, as we have shown, is already meeting Revelation by showing evidences that all material things are, after all, spiritual substance, or at least that they are not material.

In this process the individual who has been begotten from above, is transformed from a mere physical consciousness to a consciousness of God, his Father, a consciousness that is of the heavens. As Jesus said, the heavens are opened and man discovers the angels of God ascending and descending upon the son of man. At this point he is made acquainted with the occupants of the spiritual heavens, and there awakens in the inner consciousness of the man, a realization of perfect oneness with the heavenly occupants, the untold millions of perfected souls that form the Eternal Brotherhood of which Christ is a member.

It should be borne in mind here that the father and mother love that exists in man is a derivative of the heavens, that the father and mother of the spirit-child love it; and that their special care and even solicitude are for the prosperity, growth and unfoldment, not only of the spirit-child, but of the body and mind that it occupies. Think for a moment of that wonderful love of God, and then think that that love is all turned toward you, to care for you, to protect you and to provide the necessary conditions for your highest possible good.

When the spirit-child has gotten sufficient control of the animal body and mind to transfer the consciousness of the flesh to the consciousness of spirit, then the old passions, the old likes and dislikes, will have all passed away. Of such the angel said to John, "He shall go no more out," for he has entered into life, his consciousness is one with the immortals, and the things of this world are only secondary considerations; they serve for the uses of the body in the consummating of the object in the creation of the world.

Thus the individual becomes a co-worker with God and his angels, and, as we have seen that the "Image of God" is consummated in the gathering of the first ripe fruit of the earth, the 144,000 or the 288,000 individuals, all of one mind; therefore the one great desire of the individual brought to this point will be to follow out and to accomplish God's purpose, and the same desire and all-controlling impulse will be in the heart of the whole body. The Spirit of the highest will be the dominant, leading spirit of every individual, and, consequently, this body will be caused to come together from all parts of the world; the members will be moved as by one mind, one spirit, and they will come as the prophets have prophesied in the following:

"Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children." (Isaiah lxvi. 8.) (See also Ezekiel xxxiv. 11 to 31;[16] Rev. chapters i. vii., xiv., xxi, and xxii.)

By virtue of the foregoing conditions brought about by being born of the Spirit, men are to be drawn together by one common impulse, to unite in one organic structure, a structure which was revealed in the symbology of the temple of God, the cubical city. Herein is found the great truth referred to by the Apostle Paul when he said, "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular."

When this Great Body is drawn together by the one Spirit, there can be no jealousies or schisms among the members, for each will love above all things to live in harmony with the mind and will of the Father, and to be the expression of that mind. As God is one, but will have many manifestations through the varied organisms of men, each one will delight most in being what he or she really is, will delight in the use for which he or she was designed in creation. Therefore no one will desire the position occupied by another, and the whole Body will come into its functions of use "without the sound of a hammer," without an effort on the part of any, except to know and to do the will of the Father. (I. Kings vi. 7.)

Thus they will stand forth as a multitude of members constituting one "Grand Man," one glorified individuality, as the Spirit proclaimed by the apostle, speaking of the Christ:

"Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: in burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God."

After saying that God had no pleasure in sacrifice and offerings and burnt offerings, and sacrifices for sin, which are offered under the law, the apostle adds, "Lo, I come, to do thy will, O God," "he taketh away the first, that he may establish the second."

This Glorified Man made up of 144,000 members or 288,000 individuals (male and female) will be the "Image of God," and as God is the life and mind thereof ("The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silent before him"), therefore the "Likeness" will also be manifested. As we have seen in a former chapter Yahveh Elohim is the great center and God of the Solar System, and, consequently, of all that belongs to our earth; and according to the revelation to John, when this Body is organized its members are made "to be unto our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth." By virtue of being the embodiment and expression of Yahveh, they will inherit the earth.

They will then be in truth and verity the sons of God, and they come into the image of their Father through coming into the unity of the Body that is composed of many members, a Body which becomes the Christ, the anointed Savior of the world, as well as the king and ruler of the planet earth. The accomplishment of this will be the accomplishment of the work declared in the words:

"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

CHAPTER 20. THE IMAGE AND THE LIKENESS

In bringing before your minds this wonderful ultimate of the purpose of God in the creation of the world and of its inhabitants, man, the most that we can do is to call your attention to certain laws and forces already visible and active among men. This ultimate has had no physical standing in the world—it has existed only in the creative-thought, and therefore no language has yet been formed, capable of portraying its realities.

As we have briefly stated the methods by which man is to come into "The Image of God" and "The Likeness of God," we shall now give a brief synopsis of the manner in which "The Image and the Likeness" are to be brought into form.

Through the regeneration, every member of that Great Body of the first ripe fruit of the earth, the 144,000, becomes exceedingly sensitive. In other words, all the life-currents and mind-powers become intensified, and the sense nature becomes so acute, that each member is conscious of every thought, feeling and emotion of every other member. Even now we find that there are men and women who through evolutionary processes alone, have become so refined and intensified that they are able to know and to read the thoughts of others. Within the last few years many mind-readers have been before the public and some of them have demonstrated to the satisfaction of investigators that they can read the thoughts of persons.

When men and women have lived the high and holy life taught by the Christ, which includes regeneration (for he lived a celibate life), conserving all the life generated by the body, then every function of their bodies will be increased and intensified, so that we may say that each individual will become twelve times greater in mind-power, and all the powers of the body, than he was before he began to live the regenerate life. They not only become stronger and wiser, but they become exceedingly sensitive and intense in their consciousness, and as they are governed by the spirit of love from God, they see in each other the child of God, and so they love each other as they love God, and as they love themselves. The character of this oneness is best explained by illustration, for example:

Imagine twelve such persons together in one room. Each one of the twelve has so far developed, and is so perfectly in sympathy with the others that he feels every feeling and knows every thought of the others. When these twelve are first brought together, the reciprocal action of the thoughts and feelings produces a condition very much like that produced when a number of persons are talking at once—a state of confusion. But let one begin to speak and get the interest and attention of the others so as to focalize the thought, and the minds of the whole body would think together as one.

Again, imagine this body of twelve to be a regenerate body, whose whole desire is to be centered in God, and whose members have been begotten from above. Because God's spirit is the life of the body, the body must be one as God is one. Since each person necessarily expresses a function of some part of the Grand Man—as Aries, the head, Taurus, the neck, et cetera—and each seeks to express only the mind of God, he makes no effort to be that which he is not, but supplies his own particular mind quality to the whole body. And whatever particular function is called into action, the body unites in giving power to that function to express itself. Its thought would be the aggregate thought of all the members, in precisely the same way as when one attempts to lift a heavy weight with the right hand, the will and every function of the physical body are called upon to supply their quota of energy for its accomplishment.

Who has not realized while talking to a number of persons that there were certain persons in the audience that gave special inspiration, that supplied a mind-power so marked that the speaker could not but realize it? So it would be in the bringing together of twelve persons in perfect harmony with the mind, the spirit, of the Father. God's spirit being the life of all, they would run together as so many drops of water, yet every individual would maintain his own consciousness, but his consciousness would be enlarged and his realization would be increased to comprehend the consciousness and realization of the whole body. Each member's capacity and brain-power would be twelve times as strong and capable in every department.

As man lives in his memories and realizes in his consciousness, his realizations constitute his limitations. But when he takes into his consciousness the consciousness of eleven others, his realizations have been augmented eleven-fold. This increase of consciousness on the part of one does not detract from the others but, on the contrary, they each extend their sphere of consciousness in the same ratio.

In the organizing of the Body of the Christ, the bringing into existence, Yahveh Elohim, as king and ruler of this planet, each individual in his preparation must have consecrated his life to God, promised absolute obedience to and acquiescence in the knowledge and wisdom derived from the Spirit. He must have undergone a long course of training, wherein the newly begotten child of God grows to manhood and takes absolute possession of the physical body and becomes fully conscious of the mind of the Father, of Yahveh Elohim, the Great Body of perfected souls that created the world. Being thus conscious of the mind of the Father, when the Father wills to build the house (see first chapter of Haggai) his Spirit will move within each individual and cause him to be conscious that it is the will of the Father and therefore it is the will of each to come out from the world, to gather together into one place, "the place prepared of God," where the whole body will be led and instructed by the Spirit that each may be his natural, spiritual self. Every individual will be perfectly free to express his own higher, spiritual nature, and then, as the interests of all are as one—that is, the expression of the mind and will of the Father—the whole Body of 144,000 souls (or 288,000 persons) will be as one individual, and the sphere of each individual will be so enlarged as to embrace the whole Body. As the Spirit said through the apostle, "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ."

We shall now consider 144,000 regenerate persons built into one Body, through the expansion of a sphere of consciousness to include the entirety of the Body:

Let 1 represent a person's normal powers; 12 represent a person's powers after living the regenerate life; 2 × 144,000 = 288,000, or the entire Body (men and women); then the powers of the entire Body will be represented by 288,000 × 12 = 3,456,000, or the powers of the Body will be represented by 3,456,000 times the powers of a normal individual. Can you imagine the power of such a Body?—a Body in which when one member is called into action, the whole Body contributes all its powers to the execution of that action, in the same manner that our own body functions.

In this Great Body, as we have seen, whatever the Body wills, or rather whatever the Spirit of Yahveh, who has become the life of the Body, wills, each member of the Body wills, and whatever the will determines upon and centers the activities of the Body in, the powers of the whole Body, so far as necessary, help to accomplish.

You who know something about the psychic power of a person to control an audience, can have some idea of the power of this Body to control the world. Thus it is made plain that God's methods are purely natural. When the angel showed John in the Revelation that these are to be kings and priests unto God and to reign on the earth, we are not to understand that they are to attain to that calling by some supernatural leap through the direct interposition of God.

When God said, "Let us make man in our image and like us, and let them have dominion," he set in motion laws, which in their ultimate would bring the condition into existence that we have been trying to present to your mind—a Body of men and women that has become the temple of the living God, the God of the universe. Through the normal working of the mind of that Body (normal because in unity with its Creator) it necessarily takes control, exercises dominion over the entire mind-currents, yea, and over all the laws and creative methods active in the planet earth.

In the organization of this Body and its unity with the Spirit of God we have a picture of the exact "Image and Likeness," for this "Image and Likeness" is the ultimation of the divine purpose, purposed in the Mind that never fails.

The difference between this Body and that of the Elohim is in degree and not in form or function, or methods of organizing. Consequently if you have difficulty to conceive how Elohim the God and Creator of the world can be a Great Body of men, separate individually and yet one, we think what has been said concerning the gathering, preparing and organizing of this Body of 144,000, makes it plain. We think it has been made plain that when Elohim said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," that this was the ultimate of the race, and that this gathering and organizing of the Body are the fulfilment of that declaration.

In order to help the mind to comprehend so great a thought, let us imagine a man that is both male and female in his own person, builded of molecules which are individual men and women, a Grand Man possessing far more than 288,000 times the power of any individual that we have heretofore known. Every function and organ of this man is filled with the Spirit of Yahveh, the God of the universe, imbued with his mind and with his will. Standing upon the highest plane of planetary unfoldment, he overlooks his "dominion," the planet earth, with its teeming millions who have developed to a point where they have outgrown their civilization and all their facilities and are trembling upon the brink of a precipice down which they must inevitably fall, to the condition of six thousand years ago, unless there is a savior who is able and willing to create for them a new order of existence.

The organism that we have been picturing, will have abundant capacity to provide for this dying race the new conditions which are an absolute necessity to its perpetuity. From the thought that we have presented, it is evident that, judging by the known capacity of men, we have in such a Body an aggregate mind and will, amply sufficient to lift civilization to a plane of action where it could go on developing. But how much more should we expect of such a Body when filled with the light of the Infinite Mind!

Many of the leading physiologists of this the Twentieth Century are saying that the strenuous life developed in this cycle has produced and intensified qualities within man that have made him too sensitive and refined for the ordinary duties of life, and that, consequently, diseased conditions are rapidly gaining ground in organs too delicate for the strain put upon them. They conclude, therefore, that the race has reached the climax of its unfoldment and must fall back to unknown depths if not to annihilation. But there comes the voice of God through the prophet ringing down the ages: "And saviors shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be Yahveh'S."

The object of this volume is to bring to you, mature souls of our age, the knowledge of the purpose of God concerning each individual and to suggest methods by which not only you yourselves may be saved, but methods by which you may become members of that Body which is to be the Savior of the world, the anointed Lord of all the earth. The way is so plain that, as the prophet Isaiah said, "wayfaring men, yea fools, shall not err therein."

It is for you, as individuals, to consecrate your lives to God, and to desire above all things to know the truth that you may live in harmony with it. If you do this, honestly and sincerely, then will God send into you "the Spirit of Truth" that will lead you into all truth. Consequently, when you read this work you will be caused to perceive the truths that it contains, which will put your mind in harmony with your consecration, so that you will no longer resist the leadings of the Spirit. Then will the angel of God take charge of your life and help you in every time of need, and lead you into the unity of the Body of the Christ, the Savior of the world, brought to light in these pages. To that end we consecrate these thoughts and pray that the Spirit of the Highest may attend them and illuminate your intelligence to receive them.

THE MANIFESTATION OF THE BODY

While the gathering of the Body, according to the Revelation, will be the work of a short time, yet we are told that the perfecting of this body, the perfecting of its dominion over the earth, will take a thousand years.

It is hardly reasonable to suppose that there is any one now living, even if placed under the most favorable conditions, who could be perfected in the likeness of God, Yahveh Elohim, in a short period; for all that belongs to attainment, is not only a subjugation and conquest of the body, but it is also a growth of the soul and a growth and a development of the body into perfect harmony with Spirit.

There is, however, a most potent factor that will work in this Body, a factor yet unknown to the race, which is this:

Every member of the Body, before he can become really one with the Body, must have not only overcome generation, but he must have turned the currents of generation toward the brain and polarized the mind fixedly upon the Spirit.

Man in polarizing the mind on the Spirit at once finds himself the focal point of the planet and of its subtile mind-currents and electric forces. In generation he is the head of the planet, leading creation, but when he has taken control of that creative-power in himself and has brought it under the absolute control of the mind, he begins to possess dominion over the earth. The two forces active in creation, the positive and the negative forces, represented and focalized in the man and the woman, produce in them, because of the unity of the two in "the regeneration," a condition almost identical with that seen in the electric arc lamp; and after they have come into order it will not be long before nature's energies will cause their bodies to become luminous and bright as the body of an angel, "shining as the sun."[17]

This condition of luminosity could not obtain all at once; if it did, it would burn up and destroy the physical body. It will require years for the body to change from what we now know as material substance into the spiritual substance adapted to the fires of the Divine Life. No wonder that God by the prophet asked, "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" The condition into which this body enters is a condition that transforms all that belongs to manhood and womanhood into the likeness of God.

We read—and it is true—that "God is a consuming fire," and that "God is love." We must bear in mind that it is not the gross fire that we know as fire, nor the gross passion that the world calls love, but it is a fire like that which Moses saw in the burning bush which did not consume the bush. It is a fire that transmutes, consuming nothing but the grosser elements, transmuting them into the finer elements and to that more like itself.

At the present time we are so far from being like God that if God should speak to us in words, those words would consume us as a living fire. Therefore those composing this Body must abide for centuries in that living fire before they are wholly transformed into spiritual substance. They will not die, but as it was said of the Christ, so it may be said concerning them, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades [the grave], neither wilt thou give thy Holy One to see corruption," for they will have overcome death, as did the Christ.

In place of the body's seeing corruption, the same law that now perpetuates it, will be accelerated. That is, we take nourishment to replace the tissue that is being burned up by thought and action. Thus we are continually eliminating the old and taking on new bodily substance. As this bodily substance taken on is qualitated by the mind active at the time, so the members of this Grand Body, as they burn out and eliminate the old, will take on more and more spiritualized substance. The time will finally come in this process when they will become as invisible to those upon our present plane, as spirit is now invisible to man. The change with this body will be so gradual, however, that there will be no death. The process will be similar to that active in our present physical existence, by which we are constantly eliminating the old and taking on new flesh.

It is necessary that this change should be gradual, for the members of this Body are to be, as declared by the angel to John, "kings and priests unto God and reign on the earth;" that is, while they will execute kingly dominion, it will not be by force, not by arbitrary word of command, but by the spirit of divine love, for "God is love." That love will cause humanity to love to obey, to desire to obey, to desire to live in harmony with the laws of God manifested through this Body. They will be priests unto God, because they will be instructors and teachers to the world. If this change were too sudden, this Body would soon be placed so far beyond the people who are to carry forward the work of Generation that they would no longer be able to touch the mentality of the people. On the contrary, this process of refining being gradual, this Body will be able to lead the world of humanity up with them. This was revealed to John on Patmos, as seen in Revelation, for, after the 144,000 were sealed, John saw an innumerable company of every nation, tribe and people who came up to the same general relation with God as the 144,000.

The world now under the most potent conditions of spiritual and mental power, could not be redeemed and brought up to this physical and spiritual plane in less than a thousand years, and perhaps not all of them in that time, for we read in Revelation that after the thousand years have expired, Satan, the adversary, will be loosed for a little season.

This Body being, as we have said, the focal point of the planet, it will be able as was the Christ to command the unclean spirits and to control them absolutely, and in order that the world may be led up to this high plane, the dark influences that now hinder the progress of the race must be bound so that their power over the people will cease. After the race has been redeemed, after the reign of a thousand years of this Body upon the earth, the adverse forces must be again let loose, for there will be those who are unfit for this new order of life, and they must be given the choice between serving the good or the evil; for we read:

"And when the thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall come forth to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the war: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up over the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down out of heaven and devoured them."

This means that they must place themselves in a position to be destroyed before divine justice can destroy them. Every man must become his own judge, and "with what judgment he judges he shall be judged, and with what measure he metes, it shall be measured to him again." This is divine law.

In conclusion we wish to call the attention of our readers to the imagery presented in the twenty-first chapter of Revelation, wherein John sees the new city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. We read that "the city lieth four-square, and the length thereof is as great as the breadth: . . . the length and the breadth and the height thereof are equal." But as it would take a volume to convey the thought herein embodied, let it suffice to say that when this takes place it will be because the Body has become so highly developed and spiritualized that the Elohim, the matured souls of all the ages, will dwell with men, as the angel said to John in Revelation xxi. 3-5:

"And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God: and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away. And he that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he saith, Write: for these words are faithful and true."

Again we read in verses 22 and 23 of this chapter:

"And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb, are the temple thereof. And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb."

THE PERSONAL APPLICATION

We introduce the following chapters to aid those whose minds are reaching out for methods by which to attain the ultimate that has been set forth in this work. We have not attempted to give the methods in their regular sequence, because the experiences of each individual will be different, and the angel of the Lord will lead each one according to his peculiar quality and temperament. We believe these facts are presented for the first time to the world because the time has arrived for the coming of the MESSENGER OF THE COVENANT referred to in the third and fourth chapters of Malachi. The office of this MESSENGER OF THE COVENANT will be to lead men to the Door, to the Christ, who will introduce them in thru the gate into the city to the Father, for, as we have before stated, the time has come for the establishment of that Eternal Order in the physical form upon earth once more, of which Order Christ came as a member, and as he said 1900 years ago, so say we, "Be ye also ready; for in an hour that ye think not the Son of [a] man cometh."

EXIT FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW

CHAPTER 21. PART 1

Our Lord Jesus said, "Narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few be they that find it." No doubt since the time of Christ, these words have brought a shock to many a devout soul; but we are inclined to believe that the words, "few be they that find it," were intended more especially to apply to the age of generation and death intervening between the time of Christ and the present, for, as has been herein stated, it is the attainment through this "narrow way" that was the ultimate purpose in the mind of the Creator in creating man. This purpose is the end to which all men must attain some time, but at this time, at the end of this age, there will be comparatively few that will attain.

We repeat here what has been said before, that all who have the will to attain, may attain, for the fact that they have the will to live the life requisite to attain, is an absolute proof that they have the ability within themselves.

Again, it was said by the apostle, "Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ;" for not only has he given the world the quality that is planted in the earth-life of man, the substance of Divinity, but his teachings have been left on record, which, if followed faithfully, will lead man to the final goal—immortality. But there are some things about the history of the church in the past that repel many intelligent, highly developed people of our day from seeking what used to be called "religion," or "conversion." This repulsion is mainly due to a peculiar emotionalism that has followed the church.

This emotional devotion has had its use, not that the Elohim are influenced by that emotional zeal, for it is the office and desire of God and his angels to lead his people in the way of true intelligence. But emotional devotion has served the purpose of breaking down and suppressing the animal sense desires, and has caused the inner consciousness to centralize on the idea of God. This has enabled God's people in the church to inspire, to draw in, so to speak, from the Universal Soul a new and higher quality of life, and it has produced sufficient effect upon many to cause them to continue striving to live a better life—striving to be the expression of that higher life that has been drawn into the organism.

But now that we have come to know the truth—for the Lord Christ said, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free"—we have endeavored to set forth the great truths of the Gospel of Christ and if these facts are fully grasped by the intelligence they will have an important influence on the soul-consciousness, because they are truth.

While heretofore suggestions have been given that cover the subject of this chapter and those following, yet, as they are associated with thoughts of greater or less magnitude, new to the majority of thinkers, they may have been overlooked.

If we were going to ascend a ladder we should place one foot upon the first rung and then the other foot upon the next rung, and so on; we could not begin at the middle, try as we would. So in all that we do, we must begin at the beginning and work up gradually.

There are many in the world who began at the beginning and they began well, but through the deceitfulness of the world, through lack of knowledge on the part of the teachers, through many doctrines being thrown upon the world, they are lost, bewildered, and do not know what to do in order to attain this divine ultimate.

First of all it is necessary that we be rational. The doctrines set forth in this work are destined to bring our minds out of the old mythical ideals—the dream-condition of the past—and to place us upon a solid foundation of knowledge and understanding, that we may obtain the power designed for us in the beginning.

In the past, prayer has been a vague ideal. Men have prayed. Prayed to whom? to what? They have been, as Jesus said, like the Gentiles who "think that they shall be heard for their much speaking." Ministers stand in the pulpit and pray for everything; but if they really believed that one-half of what they asked for would be granted them, they would be frightened. When the Lord Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find," he referred to something just as practical, as direct and positive, as if you were going out into the business world to transact affairs of the material life. You could not be induced to ask a favor of any one in the material interests of this world, unless you really felt the need of that favor, and then you would think over the matter wisely and well and consider who would be most likely to grant the favor, and when you asked you would have confidence, reasonable belief, that you would receive that which you asked for; in other words, you would have faith that you would receive that which you asked for. And if you go to God, the Cause and Source of all things, in the same way, you will find that the word of the Lord Christ is a great truth: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find."

In this work two phases of the God manifestation have been brought to your mind: (1) Yahveh, the universal and all-pervading Mind and Will of the universae, and (2) the manifestation of Yahveh in Elohim. We have to do directly with Yahveh the Universal Mind, the Fountain of Life, from which we were organized, the Fountain of Life from which all things come. In that Fountain of Life is everything that is. What did the apostle mean when he said:

"But the righteousness which is of faith saith thus, Say not in thy heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down:) or, Who shall descend into the abyss? (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is the word of faith which we preach." (Rom. x. 6-8.)

There are many at the present time who are looking for that same Jesus to come in the clouds of heaven with power and great material glory; but, we are told, that Christ will come as a thief in the night. How can we harmonize these two passages of Scripture?—In this way: We see from the foregoing quotation, the Christ "is nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart;" if you have faith in God and in that divine sonship that we have herein set forth, you will be a partaker of that passover lamb that was all eaten, that paschal lamb that enters into and finds expression in the inner life of the partaker, and causes you to become a member of the Body of the Christ. When the Body is organized in harmony with the Divine Purpose, then this Body of the Christ, referred to in the chapter "The Image and the Likeness," will be manifest to the world with great power and glory.

Therefore cease to say in your heart, "Who shall ascend into heaven to bring Christ down from above?" but remember it is the word of faith, not blind, unreasoning faith, but a faith that is born of knowledge and of experience by the indwelling Spirit. And how is this experience to be obtained?—This is the all-important question.

Remember first that prayer is the sincere desire of the heart. Have you a sincere and earnest desire to be like the Christ? He is the great Door and Head of that Eternal Brotherhood on earth; who by his teachings and by the light of truth that he left to the world has shown the path that leads directly from ignorance, sickness, sorrow and death, and who was manifested that he might bring life and immortality to light. If you have this sincere desire you will reach out for that spirit which was manifested in the Christ, desiring that that spirit be in you and that it manifest through your life and character.

As to methods to be applied in order that that divine sonship may be manifested in you, turn to that wonderful Sermon on the Mount—the fifth, sixth and seventh chapters of the Gospel according to Matthew—read it carefully; read it with an outreaching to God, the Source of life, light and knowledge, that you may know, that you may have the understanding that the Spirit intended you should have, and not only the understanding, but the power to apply it in your life. And as you desire that power, remember the Master said, "Believe that you have it and you shall have it."

Therefore, as you read over that wonderful sermon, decide that you will follow the teachings absolutely and believe—for you have reason for believing—that you have the power from God to live the life therein taught and to live it perfectly. At this point it will be necessary to realize the importance of the suggestion to be rational, for unless you take hold of these teachings of the Christ with a reasonable mind, you will be inclined to go to extremes, to become irrational in your application of the truth. For instance, the Lord said, "Be not therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." The irrational one therefore says: I will take no thought; I will be just like the birds; I will sit down and do nothing and the Lord will feed me. The irrational side of this is very apparent, not only from the world's point of view, but from a spiritual standard. How does God feed the birds? Do they not have to work for their living, to hunt their food wherever they can find it? Sometimes it is difficult for them to find sufficient, but they go right on faithfully doing their best. So must you do your best, but do not be anxious, is the word of the Lord.

This will be a suggestion to you of what we mean by being rational in following the teachings of the Lord Christ. Remember this, God, the everlasting Father, or Elohim and his angels, never do anything for us that we can do for ourselves. Bear in mind that God's original purpose was to make man in his Image and Likeness and to give man the ability to do and to accomplish and to obtain that which is absolutely necessary to him.

Therefore, in order that you may develop into his Likeness, it is necessary that you should be left to use your own power and knowledge to gain all that is necessary for your attainment and for the proper support of your body.

As we said before, Yahveh is the all-pervading Spirit in whom is everything and out of which came everything, therefore everything that you need is in the ether around you. Remember, when it was in order the Christ brought out of the invisible sufficient bread and meat to feed 5000, and Elijah caused the cruse of oil and the meal of the widow to replenish themselves during the famine. This was a demonstration of the fact that everything that is necessary for you is around you and that you have only to take it by faith.

But this suggests something that has puzzled the world for ages—faith. What is faith? You who are sitting and reading these words can lay this book down, rise and walk across the floor. How do you do it? by what power?—You do it by faith. If some one of your associates should say to you: "You cannot lay down that book; you cannot rise from your chair," you would smile at the suggestions and lay down the book and rise and walk. But if a mind possessing similar power to that of the Christ should speak to your soul-consciousness and say: "You cannot lay your book down," or, "You cannot rise from your chair," your faith in your ability to move would be overpowered and under the influence you could not move.

Then we give this definition: Faith is belief without a doubt in the inner consciousness. You have the consciousness within yourself that you can move the body, that you can do about as you please, and so you can, but that faith that you can get up and walk around the room may be counteracted and in the absence of faith you would be powerless.

Now we ask you to lay this book down and to think about this condition that enables you to move your hand, and when you realize what the influence is and discover the condition of mind that enables you to move your body, you have found the key to the whole situation, you have found the key to the words of the Christ when he said, "All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them." Everything that you can imagine is all around you, and it is just as much a material substance as those things with which you are familiar. Therefore faith means belief that you have that which you desire, and as you read over the teachings of the Master in his wonderful sermon, believe that you have the power to live up to the requirements and refuse to allow doubts and fears to enter into your mind. Know that God is and that in him is all power. You can believe but you can do it, however, only by refusing to disbelieve. With this thought carefully considered and worked out for yourself—for no man can make you know how to move your hand—you will discover the secret of faith.

That faith is a mental effort you may prove for yourself, for instance, by taking a weight of ten, twenty or thirty pounds in your hand and while holding it try to think quietly and deeply upon some difficult subject. You will at once discover that in order to hold the weight you have to keep your mind on it—the holding demands the thought.

We are here brought to consider faith and the powers embodied in the workings of the mind. Remember the words, "Without faith is sin." We ask you then to work out from the little suggestion that we have given you, this great problem of faith, and then have faith in God, and all things are yours.

But in the midst of all this you may ask the question: Are we left alone to work this out for ourselves?—No, emphatically no. Yahveh Elohim through his angels is watching over you with more than a mother's care, which God expressed in the thought that he gave in the preparatory message before the delivery of the ten commandments: "If ye will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people." Then hold this thought: I am a special treasure, beloved of Yahveh Elohim above all people, because I desire above all things to know and to do the right.

If you have some special treasure, special because it is the treasure above all other treasures, how carefully you guard it, how closely you watch it. If you see anything that is coming to injure it or to detract from it, how quickly you will rescue it from danger. So as soon as you decide firmly and fully to seek God with all your heart, to go right on day by day doing the things required in the teachings of the Christ, not by idealizing them and dreaming about them, but by following his teachings with the same rational, practical thought that you would exercise in any business venture, then Yahveh Elohim through his angels will watch over you and protect you from every harm and will illuminate your mind that you may know how to do and what to do. The Lord Christ had reference to this same rational following of his teachings when he said:

"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out demons, and by thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." (Matt. vii. 21-23.)

The old idea of saying "I believe," and thinking that will save you is a deception of the evil one, for if the Lord Jesus taught anything emphatically it was, "If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching." Again, in his last message through his angel to John he said, "He that overcometh shall inherit these things."

Therefore, in the rational teachings of the Christ we meet first faith then works, and through the works of obedience you will obtain the guidance of the Spirit, who will not come to you as one man comes to another man and tell you what to do and what not to do, but the angel of Elohim will come near to you and will cause his knowledge and understanding to be reflected upon your consciousness, then will you know as he knows and you will be left free to act as you please in relation to it. Thus, after you have decided to do the best you know, the angel of Elohim will cause you to know, then the responsibility rests upon yourself.

As you go on doing the best you can, you will see before you many obstacles that will appear insurmountable, but if you are determined to live the life as far as it is possible to you, you will find that the obstacles will gradually move out of your path as you press forward. You may see an insurmountable wall before you, but do not stop, go as far as you can, and when you have gone as far as you can, lo, there will be an opening through solid rock, if need be, that you may pass through, and you will soon be brought to the realization of that glorious fact that you have friends, loving, faithful friends, so pure, so unselfish, that you cannot for a moment doubt their fidelity, and you will realize that these friends that love you more dearly than any earthly parent, possess all power in heaven and in earth.

The knowledge of these facts will be given to you if you follow the instructions of the Lord Christ wholly, fearlessly; because, "ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." Here you are brought face to face with the beginning of overcoming, and the first step on the road after your firm decision to follow the teachings of the Christ, is to conquer fear.

We have said that the angels of Elohim will be sent to you to reflect upon your consciousness the knowledge that you need. This needs some explanation which we shall give, so that when you have the experience you will not let it pass unheeded and thus lose the instruction intended for you:

As we have said, the angels do not come to you as one man comes to another, you are not conscious of the angel's presence at all, you are conscious only that your mind is illuminated and for the time being you feel such an exaltation, such a peace, joy and elevation of life and character that you are confident that this condition will remain with you always; and because of that feeling that it will continue, you are liable to fail to impress upon your mental consciousness the thought that was reflected upon you.

No doubt some of you who read these words—and we are prepared to say that the following is true of all who have sought to do the will of the Lord wholly—have had times when your mind suddenly became luminous and bright and you would be so happy and exalted that you would feel as if that condition must continue always; but in a little while it was gone and you were let down to where you were before. Why is this?

It was a time that the angel of the Elohim saw that it was necessary to impress your mind with that which would encourage, strengthen and establish you in faith, or to impress your mind with certain things that you should do or that you should not do, and when the impression was made, the angel withdrew from you and you were again conscious of your own self.

Do not then be anxious and imagine that you did that which you should not have done, and therefore you lost your exalted feeling; but give your attention to the recalling and to the impressing upon your consciousness all that the angel impressed upon it in the moment of exaltation, that you may hold that knowledge and profit by it; for to that end, the angel of the Lord was sent to you. Know this, that though you seem to be let down into the old darkness, the old obscurity, you are not left alone, yet you are alone—a paradox—because if the angel of the Lord overcame for you the angel would be the overcomer and would attain the results and not you, for the promise is, "He that overcometh shall inherit these things."

Therefore, it is you that is to be the overcomer and it is for you to go to work with a quiet, reasonable, logical attitude of mind to examine self, to analyze your mentality and to study how you may do and accomplish; and when in the course of your efforts to do the right and to know the truth, you reach a point where it is absolutely essential for you to know, that knowledge will be reflected upon your mind. It will not always produce exaltation, joy and elevation, but sometimes the same angelic mind will reflect upon your consciousness the realization of failure, of error.

At this point it will be necessary to avoid self-condemnation, for self-condemnation is evil, but when you are caused to see the error, then think over the error carefully and make your decision firmly that that error shall not occur again. Then dismiss it from your mind and continue to do the best you know; for here is an open door for the adversary to come in to torment you and cause you to worry and to feel that you have failed and that there is no use in your trying to overcome, et cetera. But know that this is the adversary, the dark influences that you are beginning to meet—the temptations of the devil, as the church expresses it, and as Christ said through his angel (Rev. xii. 10) it is "the accuser of our brethren . . . . that accuseth them before our God day and night." Yes, there is an old accuser that you have to overcome; he will come to you and accuse you of this, that and the other, when in reality you have done no wrong. How can you overcome this accuser? If you claim righteousness when you are not righteous, then you come under condemnation. If you justify yourself in doing wrong, then you come under condemnation. How then can you overcome this most deceptive adversary?—Thus:

Know that the Lord's angel never accuses you. He may reflect upon your consciousness the fact of your error; but when you have weighed and balanced the matter carefully and know wherein you made the error, then decide firmly that you will never allow it to occur again and dismiss the matter from your mind.

If the condemnation continues to recur to you, repel it, refuse to be condemned and open your love toward God and reach out for the consciousness of your acceptance, and if you repel the accuser, you will obtain the consciousness of your acceptance.

You here meet a law in God's great nature that is hard to understand. If you condemn yourself you stand condemned before God. Therefore, we urge upon you the necessity of settling the matter, according to the directions of Christ:

"If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift."

This is to say, after you have become reconciled, after you have made reparation for wrong that you have done, then come and offer your gift, your self-sacrifice to the Lord, and you will be accepted. You have reconciled the matter of error when you have properly weighed and balanced the matter and have reached a clear understanding and have made a firm decision not to allow such error to occur again. Then you are free to go forward in your attainment of a new and higher consciousness of the Divine Life.

When you have thoroughly enlisted in the work, you will find that there is a consciousness within you which the church calls "conscience," which will justify or condemn you in all that you do. But as we have heretofore set forth, this conscience justifies you if you live up to what you believe to be right, and it will condemn you if you do that which you believe to be wrong, whether or not it be right or wrong in reality. Therefore, it is necessary that you should know the truth, that the truth may make you free from false beliefs.

We have here made only a suggestion for you to think about, for the field is too large to write fully on the subject, but you who would attain oneness with the Body of the Christ must think often on the subject and must desire to know the truth. The more thoroughly the mind can be illuminated, and the greater the mental activity that can be attained, the more clearly will you be able to discern the truth.

Here again the church has been deceived. The apostle said, "The mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the spirit is life and peace: because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God." The mind of the flesh is the intellect whose office is to think of the necessities of the body. Is that evil?—Not unless you worry about it. If you become anxious and worried about providing for the body, then such worrying is evil; or if your whole time is occupied in providing for the body, it is evil. Remember, Christ said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."

You will not go far in the way that we have marked out, before you will realize that you have a double consciousness, that your mind may be busy with the things of the world, with the duties of life, and the soul at the same time will be centered upon God, and even be busy in the world of spirit, so that when you have finished the material duties, you find that there is active within you a loving unity with Divinity, and that the soul had been carrying on the thought of the Spirit.

But here again you may be deceived. It is the office of the soul, or inner consciousness, to bring to your external consciousness or reasoning mind, the great truths, a few of which we have endeavored in this work to bring to your understanding. Your external consciousness is manifest by virtue of your reasoning brain. When the reasoning brain has been illuminated by the soul and you are able to think, to reason and to understand the truth, then you feel the redeeming power of that truth in the body as well as in the soul; this is what is meant by being spiritually minded.

CHAPTER 22. PART 2

In the chapter on "The Image and the Likeness" we have portrayed the high plane designed by the Divine Purpose for the people at the closing cycle of the Christian era. Many after reading this work will say in themselves: This is too far beyond me. I can never attain it. Then why was it written?—For the same reason that God caused to be written in the very beginning of our Bible, the account of the garden of Eden where man walked and talked with God as with a friend.

It is always necessary that there be an object and an ultimate set before the mind of man to strive for, and when the object is well defined, then there may be also well-defined methods for attaining that object. Even though that object be very high, yet who can limit the power of the human mind, much less, who can limit the power of God to lead and to help man to high attainments?

It will be seen in the Everlasting Covenant—the Ten Commandments—that God pledges his name to be our power, and if we have God's power to help us, is there anything impossible to us?—Certainly not. The only thing that will hinder any one from attaining this ultimate is lack of faith in God. But you may ask: Who can have that perfect faith in God? As these apparent obstacles rise up before you, an absolute criterion to enable you to judge whether or not you can attain is required. There is such a criterion, and it is this:

After reading these thoughts, if you have an earnest desire to attain this ultimate, then by Divine Authority we say that you can attain it, but if you have not this desire, then you do not belong to the first ripe fruit of the earth, for the words of our Great Master are, "He that will, let him take the water of life freely." If we look at these words from the standpoint of human experience, we shall say, then everybody can attain. But this is not so. It is only those who will. Who are those who are able to will?—Jesus answered this question by saying, "For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath." That there is an interior meaning to these words is evident on the face; for how can that be taken away from a man which he has not? The interior meaning or, if you please, the law of psychology governing here is this:

No man can have the will to do that which is not in him to do. In other words, man is possessed of a physical nature and of a spiritual nature. The ripening of the human ego, called the "ripe fruit," means the maturing of the spiritual ego to where it is able to take control of the body and to cause the body to obey the will of this spiritual ego.

Many there are who, when these thoughts are brought before them, will find within them an active desire to attain the ultimate, but they will also find another desire stronger than their desire for this attainment, which will so fully overwhelm their desire for this attainment that their desire will not amount to a decision in favor of a higher life, but on the contrary the decision will be to continue living in the old channels and relations.

This is to say, when these divine truths are brought to the consciousness of the individual "he that hath"—developed the spiritual qualities to where they have gained the predominance, the ascendency—will have the will to do and to decide that he will live this life and will strive to attain this high ultimate. On the other hand, there will be those who will say: It would be very nice to attain it, but we are of the earth and we have too many interests to leave them. Thus they will not have enough of the spiritual qualities to cause them to will to make the effort to attain. For it must be borne in mind that will is that function of the mind that executes the decisions after all has been weighed and balanced. Then the office of the will is executive—doing and accomplishing, but guided by the intellect. Therefore it is plain that to will is to be practical. It means not merely to believe or to desire, but to do something.

Thus we understand the parable of our Lord, "Whosoever hath [enough of spirit to control his actions], to him shall be given, and he shall have abundant: but whosoever hath not [enough to cause him to decide in favor of the spiritual life], from him shall be taken away even that which he hath," namely, all spiritual desire and spiritual consciousness.

Therefore this fact is presented to you: That whoever desires to attain and can make the decision to do the very best he knows and leave the rest with God, can attain and will attain—provided that decision is not afterward reversed.

During the centuries that the Christian religion has been the religion of the Occident, "conversion" has been the line between the Christian and the non-Christian. We find from reading the experiences of the apostles given in Acts, Romans and Corinthians, that in their time conversion was called "receiving the Holy Ghost."

In modern times revivalists have found in order that a man be converted he must accept Jesus as his Savior; he must in a way enter into covenant with God, make a solemn promise that he will thenceforth live the Christian life as far as he is able. As soon as the soul within him unites with the intellect in this covenant, he receives the Holy Spirit that gives him a consciousness of his acceptance with God.

We wish to emphasize the thought, that the reception of the Holy Spirit—the consciousness of the acceptance with God—is dependent upon man's covenant with God, which is simply man's promise that thereafter he will make it the chief object of his life to "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness."

Every converted soul that has made this covenant has been illuminated by the Spirit, perhaps but for a short time. But just so far as the person keeps his part of the covenant and follows carefully the leading of the Spirit, doing as nearly right as he knows (for it is the office of the Spirit to cause him to know what is right and what is not), so far will he be led, given knowledge, his mind illuminated on various subjects and, as Jesus promised, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, will lead him into all truth and show him things to come.

If the one receiving this Holy Spirit that is received at the time of conversion, is absolutely obedient to it, it will lead him into a complete and perfect knowledge of the truth. Here the question arises: How is it that so much error has crept into the church in regard to the general beliefs of the people?—The answer to this question is: Instead of following the leadings of the Spirit, the people have accepted leaders among men and have followed their dictum, even to the crushing out of the higher and holier impressions given by the Spirit. True, many thought that they were doing right and, therefore, they have not been condemned, only so far as they have jeopardized themselves by error and by an imperfect life, and have shut the door against God's Spirit so that it could not illuminate the mind and fulfil its mission—to lead them into all truth.

Why has this been permitted?—There are two reasons: First, as we have hitherto shown, it is in the line of the Divine Purpose that man shall have freedom of choice, within the limits of his own qualities and inherent ability, in order that he may grow into the Divine Likeness. Second, it is in the order of the Divine Purpose that generation, labor, sorrow, and death shall continue until man can grow and develop to a state where he is able to overcome generation and to enter into life. The Lord Christ said, "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." Who is able?—The first ripe fruit of the earth; they that have developed to where they have a desire sufficient to make the decision, a will to seek first and all the time "the kingdom of God and his righteousness," and to make every other consideration of every name and nature subject to this one purpose—these, and these only are able to receive it.

There is at the present time a great Body of people who have received the Holy Spirit, who have been begotten from above, but who have been misled through the education of our age, and as we look into the churches and among men, probably we feel as did Elijah, for after he had brought down fire to consume the sacrifice and even the water that was poured upon .it, and he thought that he had restored the true worship to Israel, he was forced to flee for his life, and he made complaint to God and said: "The children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only am left; and they seek my life to take it away," but God assured him that there were still seven thousand in Israel, "All the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him." And at this time, according to the Revelation made to John, God has reserved not seven thousand, but 144,000, yea, 288,000 souls. Are you one of that company?—You may be if you will.

Some years ago after long years of isolation from the world and continued devotion to know and to do the will of the Father, we felt an earnest desire to give the truths that the Lord had given us to his people; but every effort to give the truth to the so-called advanced thinkers was rejected, and after one of those rebuffs our soul exclaimed: O God, where are thy people?—Instantly the answer came. The Lord gave us a vision of the world on which the sunlight was shining. The people were rushing hither and thither, each one intent on his own interests; but in the midst of the sunlight there appeared dark, obscure places; and as the Spirit bade us peer into those places, we saw there hidden away a few souls upon whom shone a whiter light than the sunlight, and the Lord said: These are my people.

At another time it was shown us that God's people as a Body were still in the church, for what the Lord begins to do, he will certainly accomplish. You who have been begotten of the Spirit, have that in you which can will to follow the Lord wholly. You can, if you will, now make a new covenant with God, for, in the language of Jeremiah xxxi. 31, the time has come for the Lord to make a new covenant with you and with the house of Israel. Will you take that covenant? Will you now promise to do God's will just as nearly as you know? Remember God's part of the covenant is to be your power, and if God is your power, as we said before, nothing can thwart you. Remember too that that power is not a physical power, but God by mind created the world, and the manifestation of God's power is in the mind.

Therefore it is God's part of the covenant to make you know the right, and if you are faithful to do the will as perfectly as you know, then you certainly will be led by that Divine Consciousness. In other words, if you make this covenant with God, Yahveh Elohim, who loves you with a love transcending your imagination, will send to you an angel from his holy presence, whose business it will be to be with you and to watch over you, to instruct and to lead and to help you to do and to accomplish.

But says one: "I have made that covenant, but I am not conscious of the angels of God; true, sometimes I feel an illumination and a peace and a joy, but I do not know of any angel-guidance." No, truly you do not know. And if you knew for a surety that there is a conscious personality with you, whose business it is to lead and to guide you, it would be very human for you at once to cease to use your own mind, to cease to make efforts from yourself and to expect this angel to do all your work for you. And if you have any overcoming of the appetites, passions or of the dark forces, you will be indolent, and expect this angel to overcome for you.

Remember that the words of God are, "He that overcometh shall inherit all these things." Therefore when God's angel is sent to guide and to help you, he will not make himself known to you, but he will illuminate your mind and cause you to know the right; and there will be times when the angel will stimulate your will to do and to accomplish, and then you must use all the powers within you to do and to accomplish—to be the overcomer.

The difference between the manifestation of the angels of God that are sent to his people, and the manifestation of the spirits of darkness that come to the spiritualistic medium is very marked. The spirits of darkness demand absolute obedience, they demand the surrender of your highest intellect, of your mental conclusions; they demand absolute obedience regardless of your own ideas of morality and right; they also make themselves known and many times claim to be a beloved relative that has passed over; whoever you love most they will personify. They try to make you believe that they are the angels of God sent to guide you, but they are lying spirits.

Remember God's angels cannot be called upon to do this or that for you. Your mind must be centered on God, on the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, Yahveh Elohim, and as your mind is centered on God—the highest that you can imagine—if you want help, you do not call upon the angel that is sent to guide you, but you call upon God and as the angel is God's messenger, if you have confidence in God and you are doing all in your power, then it is the angel's office to add sufficient power to you to enable you to accomplish. In other words, in place of coming to you as a personality, God's angel will even prevent you from seeing him or from knowing of his presence, but many times he will draw so near to you that he will simply unite his consciousness, his mental power, to yours and for the moment you know as he knows, you feel as he feels, you perceive the situation as clearly as he perceives it.

Mark you, the angel does not tell you that thus and so is true—only the dark spirits tell you such things. The angel of God causes you to know for yourself, then he leaves you and you feel as if you had been dropped from a high pinnacle; but you have the knowledge that he has imparted to you, and it is for you, yourself, to use that knowledge to do and to accomplish and to discriminate between right and wrong, good and evil, truth and error. You will then realize that good is that which aids you to work in accordance with the Divine Purpose, and evil is that which hinders you from working in accordance with that purpose.

The standards of good and evil that have been set up in the world by men must be carefully examined and perhaps some of them laid aside, for, as we have shown in the first part of this work, we are judged according to our beliefs and our own soul condemns or justifies us in the proportion that we act in accordance with our beliefs. Therefore at this point it will be necessary for you to put your whole mind on God and to desire wisdom that will enable you to discriminate between good and evil, and in order that the Spirit may reveal to you what is good and what is evil.

Here is a delicate point. It is only through great devotion, through earnest prayer, and a careful life that you will be enabled to set the right standards and to remove the errors. Your soul must be free from established beliefs, beliefs that were established during the dark period of man's existence, for the angel of the Lord has now been sent to you to lead you out from the old order into the new. That which was moral and just and righteous under the old order of life has now passed away; the standards of righteousness have advanced to higher planes.

However, the standards established by the Lord Christ in that noted Sermon on the Mount are not changed; not one of the standards of the Lord Christ's life is changed. Only the standards that you and your predecessors have set up will be torn down, and they are now being torn down. Having covenanted your life to God that you may become one of the first ripe fruit of the earth, you are going through the process of harvesting, of being cut down, separated from the ground; you no longer live from the earth, but you live from God. As the Master said, "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you." This abiding in him was further brought to light in that noted prayer recorded in John xvii:

"Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word; that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us."

You are seeking that oneness, and even now you have attained it, so far as you can believe it, provided you have fulfilled the foregoing requirements. At this point again read carefully the Sermon on the Mount, for from this standard God is able to make you keep and will make you able to keep all the statutes, the ordinances, that Christ has laid down in this wonderful sermon.

Remember that there are not many things for you to keep in mind, but there are very few. You have decided to do the will of God as perfectly as you know it, and if you believe God, as he has promised to make you know his will and has sent his angel to you for that purpose, you need not be anxious for anything but to do his will.

Keep ever in view your purpose, make everything yield to the accomplishing of that purpose, then all things will work together for your good, for you are called now of God according to his purpose. (Romans viii. 28.)

So far we think that we have made the way plain before you. We have shown you how to free yourself from the bondage that hinders you from going forward, and we have shown you how to place yourself in the hands of God whose power is unlimited, and who is able to make you know and give you power to do his will. Henceforth look no more to man. Look no longer to books. Desire to know only such truths as you need to enable you to accomplish the Divine Purpose.

If you keep your eye on that inner consciousness—for remember God speaks in the soul, though he sometimes illuminates the brain—then when the impression comes to read the Scriptures or any book, read it carefully, musingly and prayerfully. Always keep your inner eye upon God; never let it change, then whatever you read, the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, that has promised to lead you into all truth, will illuminate your mind, will enable you to discern between truth and error, so that you cannot be deceived.

When we say you cannot be deceived, it all depends upon your having covenanted your life to God, upon your keeping your mind unselfishly centered upon the Spirit, desiring nothing so much as to know and to do the will. When this desire is the absolute, controlling thought of your mind, nothing can deceive you. But remember, if you set up an idol in your heart (see Ezekiel xiv.), if you desire something for yourself, it matters not what, and then look to God in the spirit of devotion, you will find that the Spirit of God will not respond to you; and if you persist in living the life in order that you may accomplish something for yourself, accomplish some purpose that you have set up in your heart, which is your idol, then evil spirits will come to you, apparently granting your desire, but taking possession of your soul, and your last state will be worse than the first.

What has been said in this chapter is preparatory to placing you in the hands of the Father, where you will have no more absolute need that will not be supplied by the Spirit; but remember that supply may often come to you through physical means, or through the mentality of other persons. But you cannot set up the idol in your heart as to how the things that you need shall come. God may use some low, even malicious, person to teach you some great and grand truth. Remember always that it is the knowledge that you want, not the messenger.

If God sends an important message to you by the hand of a devil what concern is it to you? It is the message that you want. It is the knowledge that is useful to you, and if a messenger comes with knowledge that is not useful, that is not in harmony with the Divine Purpose, no matter if the messenger claims to be the angel of God, no matter if he comes in a flame of fire, reject the message. Believe God and follow righteousness and all will be well. For, if you have lived the life up to this point, God will have fulfilled his part of the covenant, and you will realize that you have the spirit of truth and you will be able to discern between truth and error. Just so long as you are faithful to your part of the covenant, faithful in your devotion to God and Spirit, so long can you absolutely trust that Spirit of truth that will lead you into all truth, and enable you to reject all error, and will many times even show you things to come.

The teachers in the church are ever warning their people against error, and frequently warning them against great and important truths as error, because the teachers do not believe God. But if you believe God, and trust him wholly, your eye will ever be single to the knowledge of the truth; not because you want this, that, or the other, but because you want only to know and to do the will. Then you will know within yourself. It will not be a belief, but God will make you know the truth. But after you have been made to know the truth, if through fear or through any means whatever, you fail to follow it, to be led by it, then will the Spirit leave you to go your own way until you repent and seek God with all your heart again, and find that peace and confidence which enable you to be obedient to the knowledge of the truth; then you will be made conscious again that you have the guidance of the Spirit.

CHAPTER 23. PART 3

The prophet said, "Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us: for thou also hast wrought all our works in us." While this in itself is true, yet there is another side to it, the purpose being, as noted, to make man in "The Image and the Likeness" of God and to give him dominion. Before man achieves dominion he must have his powers developed so as to give him the practical experience in the use of the powers and in the control of the conditions that will enable him wisely and correctly to dominate, to have dominion over the world and all things in it. Therefore Jesus said:

"Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth; but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you."

We are treated as friends and the newly begotten son of God in the individual must now take possession of the body, of the appetites, passions, impulses and desires, and of all the conditions affecting the body in any way. This spirit-child being of God, is in itself perfect, but it is yet a child, though a perfect child of God, but not a perfect man of God. This child must grow, increase, become strong, and as Jesus said, it must bind the strong man and then spoil his goods. The strong animal desires and propensities must be bound and subordinated to the spiritual soul, so that the physical man will be as a lamb, passive and obedient in everything to the mind of the controlling spirit within.

When we take a passing glance at what the goods of the strong man or carnal mind are, we find that they are in a general way everything that pertains to the law of generation and death, for the whole mind is centered in my wife or my husband, my children, my father, my mother, and my relatives; then after these, my friends. In this thought there are two points:

The first point is the I, the ego, the self; because these friends are mine they are of greater value than my neighbor's. The Lord Christ said that we must be perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect. I wonder if our Father loves my wife, my children and my relatives better than he loves yours? You would not like to believe that he does, should you?—Neither should I.

The second point is, that all human relations that are formed through the sympathies of the flesh, relate exclusively to the work of generation, to the old order of evolution, labor, sorrow, and death. In the new order there will be no such relationship for Revelation says, "Behold, I make all things new."—"Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth."

This brings us to the emphasis that Jesus put upon the work set before us as individuals. He said, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life."—"I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." The announcements: "I am the light of the world;" "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly;" "The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up," all point to the fact that he came as a light in a dark place to show man the way, to show man the methods by which, if adopted and practiced, he might be saved from the curse of the fall.

In order to find that way it is necessary that you take Christ's teachings and read them carefully with the new light that is shed upon them by the thoughts herein embodied. And as you read and muse and study these thoughts, see if you are ready to choose between the things of this world and its pleasures, and the things of the Spirit and Its uses.

If you make the decision to follow the Spirit wholly, you must sit down quietly and count the cost, for you will find that the cost is greater than the Christian world now believes. Touching this point Christ gave the following instructions:

"A man's foes shall be they of his own household. "—"He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."—"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."—"And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple."—"No man can serve two masters; either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." (See also Luke xviii. 24-30.)

Do you wonder that He said, "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it"? Now that he has sent forth his angels to gather the ripe fruit into the garner it becomes necessary that he should do as the farmer does in the fall—when his wheat is ripe, the farmer puts in the sickle and cuts down the wheat and threshes it, and gathers the precious seed into his barn. We should think a farmer very foolish who knew only how to cultivate his grain, who watches over it and takes care of it during the months of its growth, and who is so tender with it to see that it is cultivated, and then feels that it is a great hardship to see it cut down, as if all his labor and toil had been for nothing.

So will it be when the harvest of the world has come (and has it not come already?), when God sends his angels to gather his wheat into the garner; the old condition in which it has grown, like the standing straw of the wheat, must be cut down and destroyed. This means literally the breaking up of all old relations and conditions. The churches have been good; our colleges, our institutions, our social relations, the love and fealty of the son for the father and of the father for the son, and all the relations of the present existence have been good; but when the people see these things being destroyed and even being ignored by an individual, they are like the unwise farmer, knowing not that the old must be destroyed that the new may be builded thereon—knowing not that "angels must go out that archangels may enter in."

We bring up a son; we care for him and educate him; we look after him with all our tender love and care and we expect his love in return. (The human do not expect to do anything without returns.) But when he has grown to manhood he turns his mind toward spiritual things. That we think is good and we rejoice, but, alas, he not only turns his mind toward the spiritual, but he begins to follow the teachings of the Christ wholly!

"But," one says, "it is not necessary that he should hate his father and mother who have always been so kind to him." True, but he must choose between father and mother, and God and his angels, because, as soon as he gives his whole life, his whole mind, to God, he can no longer give his attention to the little things of social life; he can no longer show that same interest for the family and for the family relations and the family circle. His mind is not with father and mother, to talk of the trivial things of daily life; these become unpleasant to him; his mind is with God, and his father and mother and all his friends begin to feel that they have lost him. They no longer feel that loving sympathy and oneness with him; on the contrary, they begin to feel that he is not one with them and they accuse him of being selfish, heartless and of not loving them, and they tell him that he is cruel. (John xv. 19.) They argue with him that these things are not required by the Spirit.

Here begins the struggle; here he finds that he must choose between father, mother and friends, and God, for one or the other will have his mind and his attention wholly. "I came not to send peace, but a sword! For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law." (Matt. x. 34, 35.)

If either the husband or the wife becomes wholly consecrated to God, how quickly will one feel the withdrawal of the other! As soon as a man begins to conquer self and to overcome the passions and desires of the flesh and centers his mind on God, if he is married, the wife will at once feel that she no longer has that loving sympathy, or the control over his body that she used to have.

The human demand all that a man is, and when he cannot give them all, then they begin to feel combative towards him and then will be fulfilled the words of the Christ with emphasis, "A man's foes shall be they of his own household," and the more firmly he adheres to the leadings of the Spirit, the more vicious will be the antagonism of those who love him most, and this antagonism cannot be overcome, cannot be reasoned with, and it will not cease until they are separated one from the other.

Should a man then leave his wife, or the wife her husband? Certainly not, so long as they can live together in harmony and peace; but when the time comes that they can no longer live together without continued struggle and combat, then justice, mercy, righteousness, goodness and all the attributes of true manhood and angelhood, forbid that two shall be thus bound together, for the result of such union is evil and only evil continually. Paul recognized this when he said, "But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases; but God hath called us to peace." Here the Apostle very cautiously but wisely suggests that you are called unto peace, not to war, not to combat, not to struggle, as much as to say: If two cannot live together in peace, let them separate.

When a person decides to consecrate his life entirely to God and has properly considered the eventualities here hinted at, he, as it were, takes his life in his hands and places it in the hands of the Father and goes forward even though it costs him everything on earth and makes him an outcast and a vagabond upon the earth. Not that it will always do this; not that the person should reject and turn against father, mother, wife, children and all he loves on earth, but when the mind has been enlightened and the person perceives the necessity of giving all to God and of seeking with all the heart the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then he must make up his mind to live a perfect life, cost what it will to be perfect; and he must be perfect not only for the sake of the attainment of eternal life and for the benefits that he will receive, but that he may become a co-worker with God and his angels in rescuing from death as many of God's children as possible.

How do you know that you shall not be able to rescue your wife or your husband, your children, your mother, your father, or your friend? But you certainly cannot rescue them by refusing to follow the leadings of the Spirit and by continuing to be like them. You can rescue them only by becoming godlike; and if your becoming godlike makes them your enemies, then you cannot help it, you can remember them only with loving kindness, the same as your heavenly Father does, and every opportunity to lead them to God and to righteousness should be improved. Render always good for evil.

The first great trial and struggle will be to separate yourself from the controlling power of those who love you and from the influence of the world. You must remember at this point that the object in our creation, the object of our Father who is in heaven, is to give us dominion; as the prophet said, "But the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever."

You have set out upon the road where the first step requires that you should take dominion over your own body and especially over your own mind, your loves and sympathies. Here is the hardest struggle on the whole road; but it will not be the hardest for you, because, if you consecrate your life to God and trust in him wholly, follow the guidance of the Spirit as perfectly as you know and go forward conquering fear of anything that may happen, you will then have the special care of angels, so that your struggle will not be so hard for you as some of the struggles that will come after, yet in reality it is more difficult to conquer than any that you will have to meet after.

You will not go far in this direction until the Spirit, will impress upon your consciousness the fact that you must overcome carnal generation and must stop absolutely all waste of the seed. In other words, you must live the regenerate life, and when you have stopped all waste of the life, have conquered entirely all sex desires, and have begun to turn the generative forces inward and upward toward the brain for regenerative purposes, then the regenerate body becomes a vessel to hold spirit.

In man's present state, controlled by carnal generation, he is as a shadow to spirit. There is nothing in him that can touch or sense spirit and therefore he cannot be conscious of spirit; but when he has conserved all the life generated in the body for a period of at least one year, he will then begin to feel the touch of the Holy Spirit, he will then begin to see the door that leads from this world to the heavenly world, that leads from the association of men as mere animals, to the association and membership with that holy order of Melchisedek of which Jesus the Christ is the door.

At this point he will meet another class of enemies; enemies in his own flesh and enemies in the invisible world, which Jesus called demons—translated devils. If you should keep your mind firmly fixed in the spirit of devotion and confident reliance upon God, and at the same time live the regenerate life, and there was no hindrance in the way, you would at once enter in through the door into the city. But if you were thus permitted to enter in, without using the power of the Spirit to conquer the enemy, you would enter in as but a child, without knowledge of the powers of the Spirit.

You will find enemies rising up in your pathway out of the invisible, disputing every step of the way; and here remember that God's law is "Use determines all qualities, whether good or evil." Therefore your extremity is God's opportunity. So the fact of these enemies rising up against you is God's opportunity to make you know his power, to teach you his methods of handling, controlling and subordinating these dark powers. Thus all the enemies that you meet in your pathway are as gymnastic instruments by which you develop strength of mind and will and confidence in God, and the fulness of the powers of manhood, wherein you become both the son of man and the son of God—having dominion.

Though you meet great obstacles and terrible enemies in the invisible and intangible world, remember the name Yahveh in the "everlasting covenant." For remember that the everlasting covenant is between you and God:

"Behold, the days come, saith Yahveh, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith Yahveh: but this shall be my covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith Yahveh, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall by my people." (Jer. xxxi. 31-33.)

The difference between the covenant that God made with Israel and the one that God is now to make with you, and you with God, is that this time he says, "I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts." The old covenant was written on tables of stone, which covenant, God said, the children of Israel broke, as Moses broke the stone when he came down from the mountain; but the new covenant, which contains the same thoughts, will be written in your heart, in your loves, your desires, your sympathies and your emotions, so that your one desire will be to keep that covenant. Remember that God begins his covenant with the words, "I will be your strength, power, supporter." Herein is the name Yahveh Elohim, the word "Elohim" meaning power, and the name "Yahveh" meaning "I will be what I will to be." So in taking this covenant you take the name Yahveh.

Hitherto your life has been dominated by the creative-forces, the king of which is the serpent, the psychic power of generation. Our life has rolled on from father to son, mother to daughter, generation after generation, and we have been servants to the creative-forces or to the god of creation; but when you enter into covenant with Yahveh, the God of the universe, you, so to speak, rebel against the god of creation, you declare your purpose no longer to remain under his dominion, to serve his purpose no further, simply because his work is finished in you.[18] But the dark spirits on the invisible side will to hold you. The god of creation wills to hold you and to dominate you, but Yahveh, the God of the universe, is the God of gods (Power of all powers), the King of Kings. There is no power in the whole universe that is not derived from Yahveh, and as the part cannot be superior to the whole, so that which emanates from Yahveh cannot be superior or equal to Yahveh, the God of the universe.

God's part of the covenant is to be your power, your strength, and in taking his name, you, so to speak, rise up in rebellion against the god of creation and repudiate his authority; and knowing that you are begotten of God and are therefore a son of God, you know that you are superior to the god of creation and to the forces of the inferior world. At the same time remember that you are in the world that is ruled by the "god of this world," and unless you cling closely by loving devotion and by perpetual confidence to God, you will be powerless. But know this, that God cannot lie, therefore he cannot fail you. Trust him; believe him. If you believe God it will be accounted to you for righteousness, and the power of the God of the universe will be at your command.

CHAPTER 24. PART 4

"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

If we are members of the church, or the children of church members, we have been taught from our early childhood that we are "miserable sinners," and that no matter what we do, yet we are sinners. This idea has been so instilled into our minds that we regard this injunction of our Lord, to be perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect, as a mere incentive to cause us to strive toward perfection, but at the same time without any hope of ever attaining it on this earth. Thus we accuse the Lord Christ of a form of deception, for commanding us to do that which he knew to be impossible for us to do; therefore we are not expected to obey.

John carries out the same idea of perfection as did Christ: "Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he [Christ] is righteous," and we would emphasize the words of the beloved disciple, "let no man deceive you," but do right and you are right.

Again remember that when you do the best you can through watchfulness, prayerfulness and diligence in every direction, you have done all that any one on earth or in heaven can do. The angels can do no more than to do their best. If there were no provisions made by the Holy Spirit to enable you to be perfect, then it would be better if the words of the Christ and of the beloved disciple John had not been spoken; they are a deception, or, at least it was folly on the part of the Christ and of John to express them.

Bear in mind that you are begotten of God; that your real self is the son of God, a spiritual and divine being, as truly as was Jesus of Nazareth, and remember too that being a son of God, you are in touch with his Spirit, and that all power in heaven and in earth is at your command; for you were created and embodied for the exclusive purpose of taking the kingdom from the Father and executing dominion over all the earth.

Therefore keep ever before your mind's eye the clear distinction between your real self, who is the son of God, and your physical body, which is the son of man.

In the physical body are weaknesses and inclinations toward depravity, but in your real self is the divine son of God that gives you inclinations toward righteousness.

Strive above all things to realize that, being a son of God, you are one with the Father, and to realize also that the words of Jesus are applicable to you, when he said, "All things that the Father hath are mine;" if you are faithful and accept your high calling, you are to receive the kingdoms of this world and the dominion over them.

When these realizations become vivid to you, then you will be conscious that you are walking before God and being perfect. As God said to Abraham, "I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect."

It is essential that you believe and realize these things, for that which you believe you grow to be like, it matters not what it is. If you believe that you are a miserable sinner, you will grow to be a miserable sinner; but if you believe that you are a son of God and will to be righteous even as he is righteous, then all the new life that is generated in the body and conserved by you for the use of the brain and soul-powers, will be of that perfect quality.

It is well known that if a child is constantly told that he is ugly, wicked and bad in every way, he will grow to be wicked and bad.

That holy child that has been begotten in you, wants to realize its holiness, its righteousness, its oneness with the Father, its perfection in his sight, and all these qualities must be realized and cultivated in your mind. But remember, you must keep active the distinction between the physical structure, and the appetites and passions arising therefrom, and the real self, the spiritual man. Remember the object of your incarnation in flesh is, that you take control of this body, and no longer allow it to be controlled by the appetites, passions and desires of the flesh, but to regenerate it into the likeness of your real self and the likeness of the everlasting Father. Here you have an individual work, great and important, which must be done by you. When the Christ said, "seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you," he implied that the seeking of God and his righteousness, must be the first and chief object and all other things must be subordinate to that object.

Now that you understand what the kingdom of God is, your life is dedicated to God that it may be established, as the prophet Obadiah said, "And saviors shall come up on Mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be Yahveh's."

Yes, you are called to be a savior to the world. The office of that newly begotten son that you are, is that of a savior, as was the office of the Christ of Nazareth. If you hold firmly to the realization that you are a prince (a son) of the Most High God, and do not let the thought that you are a poor, weak, carnal man, enter your mind for an instant, then will the strength of the Spirit produce in you a consciousness that you have access to the power of the will of the Infinite, and all power in earth and in heaven will be at your command. Faithfully following this line, will bring you where the Christ was when he said, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." Up to this point you go alone—alone with God. Your eye is kept single and centered upon the Father. Spiritually you see and know no one but God; but you know that God has a great family of children like unto yourself, whom he is leading, the same as he is leading you.

But in your realizing that you are the son of God, and not a poor, weak, mortal man, you meet a grave danger, where thousands have fallen; that is, the ego, the self; the dark forces from the invisible side, will at once step in and cause you to feel that you are more than other men, and will cause you to begin to live in the ego, and there is no one thing that will destroy the working of the Spirit so quickly as this egoism. It is because of this that God said by the prophet, "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm." And in this connection the Apostle Paul said:

"For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves; but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise." (II. Cor. x. 12.)

In order to maintain your realization that you are a son of God and yet remain humble and conscious of your dependence on the Father, it is necessary that you always look upward, and if any comparison is to be made, let it be made between yourself and God and his angels. This will ever keep you humble, meek and faithful in your effort to become more and more like them. But if you begin to compare yourself with your fellow men, you at once turn your eye away from God. Your eye is no longer single and you see yourself superior to so many of your fellow men that you swell up with egoism, and the door is wide open for dark spirits to enter and to possess you, and your last state will be worse than the first.

But by faithfulness to God and by constantly living up to the highest and the best that you know, and by seeking always the light of the Spirit to guide you in everything that you do, you become joined to and one with the Father, as God said by the prophet Hosea, "And it shall be at that day, saith Yahveh, that thou shalt call me my husband; and shalt call me no more my master." (Hosea ii. 16.) Now you will know what God meant when he said, by the prophet Isaiah:

"And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be hidden any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it; when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left." (Is. xxx. 20, 21.)

You will be introduced by the Lord Christ to the Father, as he said, "Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father who is in heaven." Here will be vivid, the realization that you are introduced to the Father and to his angels, introduced into membership with that Eternal Brotherhood and are consciously a member thereof, and that you are no longer a member of this world, though a resident therein.

Now you are ready to follow the Spirit wherever it leads. As God is one, when the time will have arrived for the gathering of the first ripe fruit of the earth—for the birth of the man-child spoken of in the twelfth chapter of Revelation, which is to rule all nations as with a rod of iron—then will you be called out from the world and gathered into the place .appointed by the Father, together with the 144,000, who, like yourself, have been following the Lord wholly. Having obtained absolute control over the body, over generation and death, when you are really introduced consciously as a member to the Eternal Brotherhood, God will say, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make an helpmeet for him," and as the apostle said, "Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man in the Lord," and, according to the Lord Christ, "They twain shall be one flesh." Thus are brought together 288,000 individuals, but 144,000 souls, as the two become one, which Body constitutes the first ripe fruit, the holy city which came out of heaven from God, the new Jerusalem wherein dwelleth peace.

This Body will constitute the "Image of God," and the righteousness of your soul's desires and acts will constitute your likeness to God. Thus there will be established on earth that holy Body that has become indeed the temple of God, in which Yahveh, the Formless Former of all things, will have established his throne and through which he will take the kingdom and the dominion under the whole heaven. Then the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our God and of his anointed, the 144, 000. Thus will be accomplished the purpose of God in the creation of the world:

"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

CHAPTER 25. PART 5

In view of the fact that God is the Creator of all things, it follows that it is the same Mind working under all circumstances that continues to work in the higher spheres, even in the spirit-world. Because of this, when the Christ was on earth he found in the physical world abundant material for employing analogy in teaching spiritual things.

No doubt many who read the last few chapters, will feel a doubt and a repulsion regarding the thoughts expressed in them, because the ideal has been fixed in the Christian world that we have nothing to do but to believe on the Lord Jesus, and we are saved. But this is not the teaching of the Christ. Of course, it is necessary to believe on the Lord Jesus in order to be saved, but he expressly declared that they that believed would follow his teachings. "Devils believe and fear," therefore it is not enough to say "credo."

The work of the Christ is to lead man, as fast as he is able to go, from the childhood condition of the race to true manhood and womanhood, in pursuance of the Divine Purpose to make man in "the Image and Likeness of God."

The conditions that follow the development of the people from their child-condition to divine sonship, are parallel to those found in the growth and development of an individual child. Take for illustration a man and wife who have a beloved son. How carefully the mother watches over that child—watches every movement. How gently and lovingly she cares for him through his early childhood, and how gently and carefully the father provides all the necessities of his life, and finally the time comes when he has completed his education and he must go out for himself. The loving care of the mother can no longer follow him and the careful protection of the wise father is in a manner withdrawn. In place of being protected and carefully guarded in all his doings, he goes out to meet the world and its combat and struggles. He must now learn from experience what it is to meet adversaries, treachery and deceit in all their varied forms among men, but if he has been carefully instructed and has proper guidance in his business career, he soon learns to meet these adversaries and to overcome them, or to steer clear of them and thus to carry forward the interests of this world.

Now, wherein is the analogy?—During the work of generation, creation, the race has been carried along by the watchful care of the Lord Jesus and his angels, as a child in the arms of its mother. This child-race has been provided with all the necessities to keep the main object of its existence before the mind. Finally the time comes when those who have matured and developed to manhood, having been faithful in the teachings of the doctrine of Christ, are led by the Lord Christ in through the door and introduced to the Father and his angels.

The time of maturity having come, they are to be instructed in all the methods for developing into the fulness of divine sonship; and in order that they may be able to command the forces of nature, have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and over all the earth, it is necessary that they should have experience. They must meet and overcome all the dark forces of the planet earth, referred to further on in this chapter.

THE EXIT FROM THE OLD ORDER TO THE NEW

is symbolized in the story of the deliverance of the children of Israel from their Egyptian bondage. We read that when they were led out from their bondage they were led into the desert where there was no means of support, where there was nothing on which they could depend but God, whose voice they followed. Then they were led to the foot of Sinai where God entered into covenant relations with them. Preparatory to that covenant God sent the following message to them through Moses:

"Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagle's wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me from among all peoples: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation." (Ex. xix. 4-6.)

When Moses gave this Message to the children of Israel they answered, "All that Yahveh hath spoken we will do." Then Moses was told to "go unto the people, and sanctify them to-day and to-morrow, and let them wash their garments. . . . . And Moses went down from the mount unto the people, and sanctified the people; and they washed their garments. And he said unto the people, Be ready against the third day: come not near a woman."

After this injunction was obeyed then they were given the Everlasting Covenant—the Ten Commandments. That the Ten Commandments were designated as the Everlasting Covenant will be seen in the many references in the Old Testament to the word "Covenant."

The fact that the great name of God has been lost for all the centuries past, has obscured the covenant relations that the Ten Commandments bear to God and to man. This covenant begins with the words, as translated in King James Version, "I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage," but when translated in the light of the meaning of the divine name these words read thus, "I will be your power like I have been in bringing you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of servitude."

Now the children of Israel were a numerous people held in slavery, in bondage, to one of the greatest nations then upon the earth; and God by his spirit—through signs and wonders, demonstrated by the hand of Moses—forced upon the king of Egypt obedience to the divine mandate, to let the people go. Then he led them through the Red Sea; he went before them as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night; he led them into the great desert where there was neither food nor drink; there he fed them with bread from heaven; and Moses, the man of God, was enabled to bring water out of the flinty rock, so that they were provided with all the necessities. Through the Divine Power their shoes were preserved upon their feet, so that they did not wear out, neither did their clothes get old. Thus truly as God said, "I bare you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself." Again, "As an eagle that stirreth up her nest, that fluttereth over her young, He spread abroad his wings, he took them, he bare them on his pinions: Yahveh alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him." (Deut. xxxii. 11, 12.) This is a symbol of the conditions that are now before us, or of the conditions that are to obtain with all mature souls; that is, these mature souls are a great and mighty people, who have been held in bondage by the strongest Power on earth—Generation—now they are passing through the desert where none but God can succor.

This reference to the eagle brings to our mind the following story: The eagle builds her nest of thorns and then covers the thorns with the softest and downiest substances that she can find, until the nest is soft and cozy for the eaglets. When they are hatched she feeds, nourishes and cares for them until they are full grown. Then the eaglets are lazy and wish to remain in the nest to be cared for and fed; but the old eagle has made provisions that they shall not remain in the nest. She pulls out the soft material that covers the thorns and lets the breasts of the eaglets down on the hard thorns and transforms their bed of down into a bed of thorns. Then they are forced out upon the edge of the nest and as their wings have never been tried they are filled with fear lest they fall, but the old eagle pushes them off and they are forced to fly; but when she sees that they are weary and begin to fall, she sweeps under them and bears them upon her wings until they are rested; then she drops them upon their own wings and they are forced to support themselves wholly. Thus she continues to drill them, until they can mount up into the sky, into the glories of the sunlight.

In the past we have been provided for and lovingly cared for by the Divine Father-Mother, and this loving care is continued until the time comes that we receive the command: "Son, go work in my vineyard." Then comes the trial. Oh, how hard it seems! We have been so carefully cared for in all the past; we want to lie still, to be loved, and to be petted, and nourished by the Divine Father-Mother, but God pulls out the down from under us and we are let down upon the hard thorns of a physical existence. We feel the thorns in our breast and we are forced to make the effort. Then he sends his angels, that manifest themselves through controlling circumstances, and we are actually thrown out of our former nesting place. How frightened we are! We feel that we shall certainly fall to destruction, but a loving hand is under us when we are about to fall and we are upheld. But the nest has gone. We can never return to it; the old conditions have passed away; they have gone forever; there is nothing left for us but God—the Elohim—and association with his angels.

Some may refuse to go and may die, pass out of the body; but they do not escape by this means, for they will soon be brought back into another body, and into similar conditions that existed before, and the one and only way is before them. They must go forward; there is no retrogression in this life. God's word (nature's laws) must be obeyed, but with him time is nothing. If his word is not obeyed in one lifetime, it must be obeyed in another.

Now that you have come to maturity and feel the promptings of the soul's outreaching and yearning for something higher, nobler and better, you must go forward. But, alas, before you all is dark and uncertain and something within you seems to admonish you that the pathway that lies before you is strewn with many difficulties! Even the Lord and his angels have impressed your mind with the danger of "leaving the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, and going on to perfection," and you fear to launch out into the uncertain and unknown. But you have one consolation left; namely, if you have been faithful over the few things that you had during your early Christian life, you have learned that you can safely trust God; then, if you put your trust in God and go forward fearlessly, determined above all things to do his will, let the consequences be what they may, the messenger of the covenant will be sent to you with a message from the Father and your soul will be led to enter into covenant relation with God. God's covenant has been left on record and the message is essentially this (although it may be varied according to the necessities of the individual):

"If you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all peoples: for all the earth is mine, and you shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation."

And the time will come when you will be impressed to answer as Israel did; namely: All that Yahveh hath spoken, or will speak, I will do; I will be obedient. Thus there is a most pointed covenant entered into between God, the Spirit, and your own soul. You promise to be absolutely obedient to the guidance of the Spirit, and God promises to be your power under all circumstances, to deliver you from your bondage to this world, to give you power to overcome all the adversaries in the invisible world, even though the obstructions be as great as those that the children of Israel met when they were delivered from their Egyptian bondage.

In this covenant your mind must be fixed and the soul must answer for the body and external mind, and say, in answer to God's question: "I will he obedient, I will follow the guidance no matter where it leads me, or what it costs me; no matter whether it be suffering or enjoyment; only that I may know and do the right, the will of God, that I may become a co-worker with him and his angels in the gathering of the first ripe fruit of the earth, in the saving of his people from their sins."

Thus the soul is placed in position to apply the promise put on record by the Lord Christ: "If ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it you in my name." The name Jesus means "Savior," for, as the angel said, "He shall save his people from their sins." In this covenant, then, you take the name of Jesus, and all your prayer is "in his name," in the purpose expressed by that name.

The habit on the part of the people to pray to God "for Jesus sake," is the expression of ignorance and blindness; but when you have entered into covenant relation with God you will find that your mind is brought into unity with the Christ and becomes the expression of that name. Then all desires that have for their ultimate the purpose of fitting and preparing yourself to become a savior, an instrument in the hands of the Holy Spirit to save his people from their sins, will be granted to you by the everlasting Father, and the granting of your desires is embodied in the meaning of that wondrous name Yahveh Elohim—I will be your power—for the word Elohim means power, the creative-power.

Having taken this covenant, you have become a neophyte, so to speak, in that wondrous order of Melchisedek of which Jesus was the earthly representative in his time, for you remember the declaration of the Apostle (quoting from the Psalms), "Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedek." After you have taken the name Yahveh you are treated as you would treat your son; you are no longer carried in the arms as a child, but it is said to you: "You are a man, you are a woman, go forth and do." The encircling arms have gone; you are fearful; you do not know what to do, but remember that you have taken that covenant of obedience. Do you believe God? Then the first thing is to conquer fear by perfect confidence in God; by placing your life, your hope—everything—in the hands of the Spirit of the Highest.

Thus like Abraham who believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness, you have only to believe God and to trust him and to keep your part of the covenant, to obey his voice indeed, then the angel of the Lord will go before you; and though you see him not; though you hear not the voice of a man, yet your mind is impressed, your intelligence is illuminated and guided so that you go forward doing the best you know day by day and hour by hour, believing that God will fulfill his part of the covenant by sending his angel to guide you and to keep you from error.

You are now required to act as a man, as if the responsibility and the intelligence were yours and you had to do the work yourself. And when you have done the best that you know, you will realize afterward that Divine Wisdom was imparted to you for the occasion, and as you go on, you rapidly gain confidence in the Father.

Then comes the second message from the Father, as it came to the children of Israel, that is, "Come not at your wives." You have now passed beyond the dominating and controlling power of the law of generation, labor, sorrow, and death; you have now entered the path of immortality, the path that leads to the goal of eternal life and oneness with the Father. You must now keep the eternal sabbath; you must cease from your own works, the work of generation, and enter into the harvest field of Elohim.

Having entered into this covenant relation with God, you find that it is necessary to conquer the god of generation who has been dominating your body, to conquer "the old serpent, he that is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world," whose throne is the function of generation; he must be conquered and cast down. In yourself there is no power to do this, but remember your covenant. Remember who has promised to be your strength, your power, under all circumstances, and obey his voice indeed. Begin the work fearlessly, knowing that you cannot fail; for he who is the only power in all this broad universe has become your power, and your faith in that power makes it accessible to you in time of need.

Fear is weakness. Let us illustrate this: A lad is lost in the woods. You go to that lad and say to him: "I will show you the way out." But he says: "This wood is filled with wild beasts that are seeking to destroy me." Then you say to him: "Come with me; I will protect you and lead you out." You start out with him, but he becomes frightened and runs away; he runs away from you into danger. The only way you could lead him out would be to bind him and force him to stay with you.

Why did the Father come to you and demand this covenant of you, this covenant of absolute obedience?—Simply because he knew the dangers that surround you on every side—dangers brought to light in the teachings of the Christ.

It is because of these dangers that God requires this promise from you, and he requires that you keep this promise faithfully, and when fear arises, as surely as it dominates you, so surely do you fail to keep your part of the promise—so surely do you fail to keep the path of safety. Therefore it becomes necessary that you should, as it were, take your life in your hands and place it in the hands of the Father, and have no more care for your life, knowing that God only is immortal, dwelling in perfect light.

You will soon become aware that there are invisible, and to your external self, intangible powers, dark forces, which the Christ called "devils," that meet you and would deceive you in every conceivable way. These you must meet and overcome by your faith in God.

If a son would possess the inheritance of his father, it is necessary that he should begin at the bottom of the business interest and serve in every capacity, until he becomes master of the entire business. So God, in his wisdom, made it necessary that you should begin the work of overcoming, for, "He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son." First you must have dominion over the basic principles of your own body, and then over the dark souls from the invisible side, and as you go on step by step through this borderland that lies between the world of creation and the world of eternal sabbath—rest with God—by the power of God you can conquer and subordinate to yourself every creative-law, headed and personified by dark intelligences. And when you have overcome your own body, your own sense desires, and all the dark forces of the subjective realm, then you enter in through the door and, as the angel said to John, you "go no more out forever."

In entering in through the door, you enter into and become a part of that great temple that John saw "coming down out of heaven from God." You enter in and form a part of that body of mature souls that is to constitute man in the image and likeness of God, and at that time the words will go forth to the world:

"Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God: and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away. And he that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he saith, Write: for these words are faithful and true." (Rev. xxi. 3-6.)

Then will the individual man be not only like the Christ, but in many respects will be fulfilled the words of the Lord Jesus when he said, "He that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he," for before the Christ could say, "All things have been delivered unto me of my Father," he had to overcome the world. He said to his disciples, "Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." Why did he say, "Be of good cheer"? Not because he had overcome the world and that therefore we had nothing to do, but because he had made it possible for us to overcome the world the same as he had. And when you have overcome the world through faith in God, patient perseverance and unyielding persistence, then there is a transition that takes place as literally as if the temple or the kingdom of God were a literal city, most glorious in its appointments, and you were ushered in from the darkness and dreariness without. Once you have entered in, you have entered into all that God has promised his people, all that he has purposed in your creation, and as there is no retrogression from this high position, the angel said of such, "They go no more out forever."

You who would overcome, you who are brave enough to consecrate your lives to God in order that his temple may be built, may become coworkers with God and his angels in bringing to earth and establishing among men that kingdom for which the Lord Christ taught us to pray, "Let thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." Then will "the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord and of his anointed"—your kingdom. Then will this little grain of sand—our earth—be elevated among the stars of heaven, to become a sun—a son of God.

"He that is able to receive it, let him receive it."

CHAPTER 26. PART 6. PRAYER

In bringing the thought of Yahveh, the God of the universe, the Formless Former of all things, and his manifestation in Elohim, to the mind of the public, it is apt to cause confusion in regard to man's relation to God in his different attributes. In the past, men made an image of God the Father, as the image of a man, and also an image of God the Son, as the image of the Christ,[19] and they bowed down and worshiped them, notwithstanding the emphatic utterance in the Commandments, "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor the likeness of any form that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth," and the emphatic warning given by Moses before his death (Deut. N. 12-20).

When the mind has been drawn away from this error, imaging God, it is liable to feel lost for a time, therefore we want to bring to your mind the relation that we bear to Yahveh, the God of the universe, and to his embodied form in Yahveh Elohim.

OUR RELATION TO Yahveh ELOHIM

is that of a man to an elder brother. You remember that even Christ called us brethren (See Heb. ii. 11; Ps. xxii. 22); and the great and mighty angel that manifested to John on Patmos rebuked John for falling down to worship him, saying: "See thou do it not: I am a fellow-servant with thee and with thy brethren the prophets." Jesus not only called his disciples "brethren," but he justified them in calling him "Lord and Master," for he said, "So am I."

Yahveh Elohim,[20] the Creator of the world, is our Lord and Master, even as was the Lord Christ, because he was a manifestation of Eloah, one of the great Body of Elohim.

When you realize that you have been accepted as one of the brethren of Yahveh Elohim, a member of that Eternal Brotherhood of all the ages and of systems of worlds, you should realize in yourself the same feeling, only with greater reverence, that you had when you became a member of some fraternity. When a man becomes a member of the Masonic Order, he feels that he is allied to that order and he is likely to say: "We are doing so and so," or, "We have done thus and so." He feels his alliance, a oneness with that order, and in his alliance and conscious oneness he has more confidence in the members of that order than in any one else. He feels that in their compact it is not only a duty, but a pleasure to help each other.

You, Reader, by thinking over your own experience can bring this thought more clearly to your mind than we can present it. You need to think only of your experiences; if you are a member of some order think of the change of feelings that took place when you became a member, and observe also those that are active members of some of these orders, and you will be made to realize what that spirit of brotherly friendship means. This brotherly friendship should be realized in a greater measure when you have entered into covenant with Yahveh Elohim and have been consciously accepted as a member. This spirit of brotherly friendship should be cultivated and should be kept in mind. When cultivating it do not forget that while they are your Brethren, they are your elder Brothers, and that you are but a child. They are Masters, and your teachers, therefore they should be held in greatest reverence. You should try to realize also that the greatness, the grandeur, the God-power and all the wonderful attributes that you have heretofore attributed to God, are embodied in this wondrous Brotherhood and expressed through them.

When you realize these facts in all their greatness the things of the world will sink into insignificance; all relationships of an earthly existence will appear of very little importance. The petty evils that have harassed you in the past will seem so ridiculous that you will be lifted above them all and placed upon a plane of consciousness, so superior to anything that you have ever known, that you will then realize what the Lord meant when he said, "Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect;" then you will know what it means to ask and to receive; for you will not ask of your Brethren, Yahveh Elohim, anything that you can do for yourself. If you should feel the need of wisdom, of power, of knowledge, or of any material thing, then you can go to the Father, Yahveh Elohim, who is truly your Father as well as your Brethren, and make known your wants and they will be granted immediately.

Suppose you have a message for the enlightenment or salvation of a person or a people, wisdom will cause you to realize that you cannot grasp the innermost needs of that people perfectly, neither is the human mind capable of correctly forming the thought so as to meet the requirements of the occasion, therefore it is well, under such circumstances, to call on Yahveh Elohim as on a loving, faithful brother, for wisdom, knowledge and power, that you may lead the person, or people to a knowledge of the truth; then go forward fearlessly; and you will always find that the angel of the Lord will be present with you, and that wisdom, knowledge and power, so far transcending your own, will be manifested through you, that your admiration, your deepest gratitude and affection will be called forth. Remember the words of the Psalmist, "He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways."

The foregoing is a suggestion and only a suggestion, a truth so far as it goes, for your mind to take hold of, to think about, and to desire earnestly to know and to realize.

If we have succeeded in turning your face in the right direction, then we can say with perfect confidence: Go forward knowing that the angel of Yahveh will ever be near you and an Infinite Fountain of knowledge and wisdom will ever be accessible to you.

The next important thought is

OUR RELATION TO Yahveh,

the Formless Former and Cause of all things, the Life animating all life, the Substance originating all substance, "in whom we live and move and have our being." As we have said, in Yahveh is all that is, and as the Lord Christ said, "All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them." In our prayer to Yahveh it is necessary to realize first that Yahveh is the Will of the universe, and this being true there is no power of any name or nature, or form of manifestation that is not the manifestation of Yahveh, the Will that produced all things.

In considering the thought of prayer to Yahveh, the Omnipresent, the Source and Fountain from which all things flow, there is much that each person must learn from himself; there is only a little that can be put into words, but that little is enough to guide the mind in the right direction; the natural intuition and the spiritual leading, must fill in the deficiency which words can not express.

When the great general truth of the existence and manifestation of Yahveh (1) in the form of the perfected souls, the Elohim, and (2) in the creation of all things, is understood, then we can begin to ascend the ladder that was prepared for us by the Christ and prophetic revelation—ascend until we reach the realm where all is light, all is perfect knowledge, perfect at least so far as the individual is capable of utilizing it in the sphere in which he lives. When we speak of perfection in the line of knowledge, we rejoice to be able to say that there is no such thing as perfection in knowledge; that is, there is no limit beyond which we cannot go, for in God's infinite wisdom, progression is as infinite as Yahveh, the God of the universe. But we can deal only with the mentality that we have, the consciousness that we have and the Source of this consciousness.

We have seen in our consideration of inspiration that we can inspire only that which we are able to form some conception of, or something directly relative to it; for that of which we can form no idea is impossible to us—even to pray for. But we can have and do have a conception, an idea of Jesus, and when he has given us the proper conception of the Father, as he calls him, the Elohim, then we can inspire, draw in from Yahveh, the quality that the Christ and the Elohim possess. It is because of this that Jesus said, "And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it you in my name."

The church has never understood this thought, because they have had but a vague idea of the Christ, his mission, and who he really is, but now that we have brought to your attention the fact that he was the incarnation of one of the Elohim, asking in his name has an expansive meaning.

What is his name?—The angel said, "Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for it is he that shall save his people from their sins." Then, in asking any- thing in his name, we must have a correct idea. of what it is to be saved from sin, and that idea cannot be obtained without the conception which we have heretofore brought to light, namely, the purpose of God in the creation of man—that we may be kings and priests unto God and reign as such on the earth; or, in the language of the prayer that the Christ taught, "Let thy [the Father's] kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven." This then is the expression of his name, and it was the object of his coming into the world—to open the door that we may attain the object for which we were created.

When the mind comes into harmony with that object, and the life is dedicated to God—our hopes, desires, ambitions and all that we are, are centered in that object—then we shall be caused to know Yahveh Elohim, the God of the solar system. When the time comes that we shall know the Elohim, we have reached "that day" referred to by the Christ, "In that day ye shall ask me nothing." Therefore it follows that when we pray, while directly we do not ask Elohim, but we really are allying our consciousness to them while reaching out to Yahveh, the God of the universe, to inspire, gather in such qualities, powers and substance as we really need to lift us upon a higher plane. But, as we have said, it is impossible for us to gather to ourselves anything that we have no conception of. Therefore it is the office and pleasure of Elohim through his angels, to give us a conception, not only in the mind, but also in the soul, of his great, grand and wonderful existence as the God of our system.

Then as we pray, in order that we may gather to ourselves the qualities that will lift us into his likeness, it becomes necessary that our mind should hold clearly the conception of Elohim. It is necessary that we should have the realization that we are accepted as members of that Eternal Brotherhood of which we have said so much in former chapters, and that we should ally ourselves to that Brotherhood with a vivid realization of the fact of our membership to hold us in that direction. This will ally us to the spiritual qualities that are in Elohim, and through this alliance we may draw in the life-qualities that find perfect expression in the Elohim.

Through that conscious alliance we are brought into touch with the spiritual qualities of Yahveh; and the spiritual qualities within the soul will be enabled to lay hold of those qualities that we stand in need of. This was the realization of the apostle when he said, "The Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." When the Christ said, "how that they ought to pray continually, and not to be weary" (Emphatic Diaglott), he virtually said, desire always—and do not be weary—to become like God, the Elohim, and in order that you may desire effectively, it becomes necessary that you hold a vivid realization of your oneness with that Eternal Brotherhood, Yahveh Elohim,[21] a realization that you are no longer a member of earth's inhabitants; your reciprocal relations having ceased with earth's inhabitants, are transferred to those in the heavens. Then when you pray, while you are conscious that you are reaching out into the Fountain of Infinite Life, to Yahveh, the God of the universe—in whom we live, and not only we, but all things—yet your outreaching, bear in mind, must be immediately connected in your consciousness with Yahveh Elohim; otherwise you may be inspiring qualities that are active within your quiescent consciousness and not the qualities that are really desired to make you like God. For if we are connected with Yahveh Elohim, our sympathies are there, and we have become one of that Body, one of its youngest, lowest members, it is true, but still being members of that Body, we are partakers of its life-currents, and all the mind-elements of that Body become accessible to us.

As the object of our creation is that we become like Elohim—in that we live from Yahveh, the same as the Elohim live from Yahveh—and as Elohim is the embodiment and expression of the highest qualities possible to exist in this system, then by simply placing our mind upon Yahveh Elohim, and desiring above all things that which we need, we have access through the Body that we have become united to, to the same qualities and to the same general Fountain. This is what Jesus said but could not explain to the understanding of the people of his day: "If ye ask anything in my name." The church in praying often close with the words, "This we ask for Jesus’ sake." This amounts to nothing; but what has amounted to something in the church from the beginning to the present is, that as the Christian prays to God, having in mind the Christ of Nazareth, he being the embodiment, the manifestation in the flesh, of Yahveh Eloah, the Christian unites his consciousness to Yahveh Elohim.

Even now, you who have not reached the point where you can realize, believe in from the depths of the soul, the existence, the godhood of Yahveh Elohim, if you can love the Lord Christ—and reach out to him—for he is, he lives, and he is the only door—then through your alliance to him you will come into direct touch with Yahveh Elohim and the spirit of the whole Body. It is Christ's will and pleasure through his angels to lead you step by step from knowledge to knowledge, until you are able to be introduced to the Father.

Thus you see it is plain that in striving for the higher spiritual, you draw from the fountains of pure spirit, only through the alliance of your mind to the mind of Elohim. Let me repeat, if you have no consciousness of the Elohim nor faith in them, if you have faith in Jesus, who is Eloah, one of the Elohim, and let your prayer go out to Yahveh with your faith in Christ, the door will be opened to you and your prayers will be answered, the inspiration, or the thing desired, will be granted.

It was because of this relatedness that Jesus said, "All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them." This was the announcement of a law with which we are familiar on the lower planes of action, and, as Hermes Trismegistus said, "True without error, certain and most true, that which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above."

Let us illustrate what we mean by being acquainted with this law on the lower plane of action: We know that in order to develop a muscle we must use it. How use it?—We must begin to act as if we had muscular power. Therefore we have to believe that we have it and go to work to use it, and the more we use it, the more vivid the realization becomes that we have it, and the more fully will the muscle develop and become firm and strong.

Again, so much is said about a trained mind. What does this mean? Let us see. A young man may grow up to manhood without training—grow up like an animal, simply following the impulses of his own nature. Finally the impulse arises within him that he wants knowledge, he wants culture, development. He begins to study and he pursues his studies diligently. He does not know, but he believes that he can know, and he applies the means for gaining knowledge, and as he studies, the brain organs fill out and grow. We know from experience that it is a law that a man after maturity may begin to study, use his brain and cause the size of his head to increase considerably. These material things are accomplished through prayer, the sincere desire of the heart. The poet James Montgomery gives this beautiful definition of prayer:

Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,

Uttered or unexpressed;

The motion of a hidden fire

That trembles in the breast.

Prayer is the burden of a sigh,

The falling of a tear,

The upward glancing of an eye,

When none but God is near.

That prayer is neither more nor less than the sincere desire of the heart, the interior, yearning, loving desire for something, is in perfect keeping with the law that we have just brought to your mind. Unless a person desires knowledge, he can not get it. If a child at school has no desire to learn, he cannot learn. There may be a forced external desire causing the child to memorize his lessons to prevent being punished, but if he gain knowledge the desire must be there. And this same law increases its potentiality, in its active efficiency as it nears the Source of our being. When the sincere desire of the heart unites the consciousness with Jesus the Christ, or to Yahveh Elohim, and our earnest desire is that we may have power to know the Father, and to be like him, such desire, being in harmony with the trend of all creative law, becomes very effective. And the more perfectly our consciousness is allied to Yahveh Elohim, or to the Christ, the more effective and active will be our desire to reach out to Yahveh.

This is the method by which you may apply the divine law that was brought to light in the teachings of the Christ, and it was one of the main objects of his mission to make it possible for man to apply this law. We repeat, "He that overcometh shall inherit all things." Therefore neither Elohim nor his angels will overcome for you, for if they overcame for you, you would be neither the overcomer nor the inheritor. It is their office to teach you how to become Yahveh Eloah, the same as they are; that is, it is their office to teach you how to inspire, draw in and incorporate and embody in yourself the spirit of Yahveh, the God of the universe. By becoming the embodiment and expression of Yahveh, you become Yahveh Eloah.

How to begin this inspiring is an important matter. You have seen that it is necessary to ally your consciousness either to the Lord Christ or to Yahveh Elohim, but you do this that you may become one with Yahveh as well as one with Yahveh Elohim, in the same way that Yahveh Elohim is one with Yahveh.

The word Yahveh means "I will be what I will to be." This we have seen is the surface meaning. There is a deep, hidden, underlying meaning in this name that no man in his present form of existence can put into words.

We have, heretofore, called your attention to the scientific hypothesis that the atom is composed of electrons, "rotating with inconceivable velocity," whose distance is relatively as far apart as the planets of our solar system; each atom representing, as it were, a minute solar system. Again, every molecule is made up of atoms which, in turn, bear a similar relationship to each other, thus there is a wheel within a wheel, a system within a system.

A blacksmith may heat a piece of steel, hammer it, change its form, put it in powerful rollers and roll it out as thin as he pleases, yet every atom composing that piece of steel maintains its own sphere inviolable. The power that holds these atoms separate from each other is the Will—Yahveh. "He gave to the sea its bounds, that the waters should not transgress his commandment." He has given the atom its bounds that nothing can pass over it. We have reason to believe that this same irresistible law holds worlds and suns and systems of worlds in their places, and this law is enforced by virtue of that Infinite Will that fills all things. Yahveh said, speaking through the prophet, "I will work, and who shall reverse it?" (Is. xliii. 13.) Here is a thought that you need, and you need to hold and to keep it ever in mind. First, that it is the will, the purpose of Yahveh that you become a mind-center for his great spiritual nature to fill and to express himself through.

Will can resist the will of Yahveh?

No one but yourself. Because of God's purpose to make man in his image and like himself, he has put it within man's power to resist His will within certain limits, and to suffer the consequences of that resistance, thus making man a free, responsible being. But if you have covenanted with Yahveh, then it is your desire that his will be your will. You have seen that his part of the covenant is the pledging of his name to be your power. Have you taken that name? Then you need to know how to inspire, draw in and thus gather power from that Infinite Source, for bear in mind that if your mind is united to the Will, Yahveh, you may become as resistless as was the Christ when he said, "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth."

Remember that it is the office and the function of the Spirit of Yahveh to serve you, to be absolute servant to those who will do his will. Then if you fail to realize the power of that name through faith in it, so that you find yourself weak and incapable of being that which you will to be, or if you find that the adverse forces within yourself and outside of yourself are so strong that you can think of nothing else, so strong that they seem to crush out your consciousness, then begin to breathe rhythmically that wondrous name Yahveh. With every breath express that name, and as you express it, strive to penetrate deeper and deeper into the realization of its power; of its irresistible will power; of its power to lift you into the consciousness of his own great nature; of its power to make you irresistible in all that you wish to accomplish, of its power to crush out, beat back and drive away every adverse condition. As you thus breathe and repeat that name, let the soul open in loving unity with Elohim to Yahveh, the Fountain from which they, and you, and all things, live. The more fully your love goes out to Yahveh, the more fully the Fountain of that Infinite power will flow into you and fill you and make you as much stronger, as much more potential than your adversary, as you can possibly imagine. This, remember, is the source of your power and this power you will need. For you who after reading this work consecrate your life to God, and start out in the effort to become Yahveh Eloah, will find that you meet adversaries both in and out of the body.

There is an occult society that is well organized and numbers ten of thousands, if not millions of members, scattered throughout the world, and unless they can bring you into their organization and cause you to work in harmony with their selfish purposes, they will strive to thwart your every effort. They have the power, unknown to you, to enter your room in the astral, to see what you are doing. They have power to focalize a well-drilled and cultured will upon you to crush your consciousness out of existence. They have power also to throw around you antagonistic circumstances, to bring adverse conditions in almost every conceivable way. If you are in union with others to bring these truths to the world, they will raise up adversaries, as if out of the invisible, and weak and unsuspecting persons will be made most subtile and bitter antagonists. Much more might be said on this subject but perhaps this is enough. One thing is certain, God has not left us without power to do and to accomplish the right, but he has allowed the existence here on this planet of devils in human form who possess great power and peculiar knowledge, knowledge and power that the majority of our learned men believe impossible to exist among men. (See Rev. xvi. 13, 14.)

It is because of these powers and the development of the animal will in the members of that organization, that it becomes necessary to give you this one great secret of Divine Power. Bear in mind that your hope is in God, in the power of that Infinite Name—His Will. It is now time that there were a people organized and prepared to go forth "conquering and to conquer," able to conquer every adversary. In order that you may be able to overcome and to conquer all adversaries, we have given you the foregoing thought. Permit us here, in order to prevent any mistakes, to put the main thought, the means by which you obtain power to overcome adversaries, in a few words:

You who have consecrated your life to God, want above all things to be pure and holy and to know God and to do his will. You have either united your life with Jesus the Christ, or have become acquainted with and have united your life with Yahveh Elohim. Now you want power to pursue your aspirations—to pursue the knowledge of God and of the Spirit. God gave you his name for that purpose, the "I will be what I will to be." With this realization as you seek God and righteousness, begin to breathe rhythmically and let every breath express the word Yahveh, and as you express it let your soul-desire go out to him for his power. Think of the words, "I will work, and who shall [or can] reverse it?" Inspire that resistless will. Let your mind be fixed upon God, the Elohim, and upon Yahveh, the God of the universe, and repeat the name Yahveh until your love nature begins to reach out in earnest desire for that power, then will it begin to thrill every fiber of your being; it will make your whole body feel as if it were as invulnerable as a piece of steel; it will create in you a faith that you have in you a power that nothing can resist, and as soon as that faith is established, go forth doing and accomplishing, according to the light of the Spirit; and we, your fellow servant, earnestly pray that the name "Yahveh" may take control of your life, may be the strength in you, the protection and the power to enable you to become like him. Ever keep in mind the words of God recorded in the Scripture:

"The name Yahveh is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe."

Divine peace abide with you.

Notes

[←1]

As the terms "instinct" and "intuition" have been confused, it may be well to state briefly their relative meanings. Instinct is the impulse produced upon an organism by the Universal Mind. It becomes intuition when the brain-power is sufficiently unfolded correctly to understand and to define the thought embodied in the impulse, and the use to be served by the act which is the result of the impulse.

[←2]

While Prof. Young in his "General Astronomy" speaks disparagingly of the hypothesis of other universes beyond ours, yet at the same time he says that our universe is disc-shaped. The very fact that he gives our universe a form necessarily gives it a limit, for, if we could imagine a shape in the waters of the ocean, we would see at once that in doing so we would draw limits to separate a portion of water from all the rest. So in all thought of form, limitation is at once expressed, and we cannot believe that so eminent a man as Prof. Young, or that any of our eminent astronomers can believe that this universe limited by 10,000 to 20,000 light-years of space, can be all there is in the infinitude of space. It would be like the ancients who, we are told, believed that our world was the only world in the universe. It would be only a little broader p. 80 thought to believe that our universe is the only universe there is in space. Of course, Prof. Young may and probably does limit himself to that which he is able to see through the telescope, beyond which he knows nothing absolutely. But we cannot but suggest, because of reason, that while we do not believe in the nebular hypothesis—that the Solar System was formed out of one mass of nebula (gas or star dust), yet that there is that which appears like nebula) through the most powerful telescope there is no doubt. But what would a thousand or a million suns like our sun appear like were they collected in a galaxy and separated in the distance of space by a few hundred thousand light-years? Would they not appear like a nebula? for our sun is a small one and we have no reason to say it is the smallest. There may be numerous suns no larger than our earth floating out yonder in space; in short, there may be a universe floating in space composed of suns no larger than Mercury or the planetoids, which would appear through the most powerful telescope as mere star-dust or nebula. So that it is evident that there is no certainty from what is seen through the telescope of the existence of such an element as nebula in space, notwithstanding the spectroscope indicates masses of gas, but our sun emits masses of gas. Therefore, notwithstanding the contradictions by eminent astronomers, we believe that the evidence remains sufficient for thee statement that these nebula) that are seen in space through the telescope are probably other universes remote from our universe and there may be numbers of systems smaller even than our universe that would appear as nebula).

[←3]

The Christian believer will at once ask: Are we not told in Col. ii. 9, that "in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily"? Yes, we believe that is true, and in a coming chapter on "The Elohim" this thought is more fully explained. But we shall say here that the Godhead to whom the Apostle referred is identical with the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom Christ often spoke and to whom he called at the time of his crucifixion, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Eloi is the singular form of the word Elohim, and one of the Elohim, who are the God of the Solar System, was personified, manifested in and through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. This will be made perfectly clear in the following chapters.

[←4]

There is another force in nature that acts very much like electricity; it will give a spark of light, but has in it no heat. This is as yet a comparatively unknown force. It acts quicker than electricity and is as much stronger and as much more potential than electricity as electricity is more potential than water. This marvelous force is interior to all the forces that we thus far know and utilize, and is waiting the higher development of our race for its discovery and utilization. It fills all space, and is next beyond electricity in ethereality and is the most potent of any element that can be made sensible to the human consciousness. As it evidently governs the action of electricity we have given it the name of electro-archon in order that the thought of it may have a standing in the minds of the people.

[←5]

"Hear, O Israel, Yahveh, thine Elohim, is Yahveh one."

[←6]

Genesis i. 26.

[←7]

Genesis xviii. 8, 14; Exodus iii. 2 et seq.

[←8]

Job xxxvi. 25.

[←9]

"Biblia," June 1902. Vide "Code Hammurabi" and article "El El-yon"

[←10]

Psalm 139. 7-9.

[←11]

Matt. xvii. 12, "An Elijah has come already." (Rotherham's version.)

[←12]

If you turn to this chapter of Isaiah's prophecy you will see that it relates exclusively to an invasion then in progress, and concerning this child it is said, "For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorest [the two kings that conspired against him] shall be forsaken. Yahveh shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria." This refers to the carrying away into Babylon, which took place long before the advent of the Christ. Again, the words concerning this child are: "and shall call his name Immanuel," not Jesus. You may say, Immanuel means "God with us," but did not the Hebrews choose such names for their children? Was it not a common thing?—It certainly was. So it is not probable that this sign that was given to Ahaz referred in any way to Jesus the Christ.

[←13]

We know that the thoughts that we think partake of the qualities of the body, because thinking exhausts the body.

[←14]

Was not this the creative Word, or Word of God?

[←15]

It is evident that Jesus and his disciples believed and accepted as a truth the law of reincarnation; otherwise, why did not the Christ correct his disciples when they asked him, concerning the man who was born blind—"Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" That this is a question concerning reincarnation is evident, for how could the man sin before he was born, and suffer the consequence of that sin—being born blind—unless reincarnation is the law? Jesus did not correct his disciples in that thought, but he answered, "Neither did this man sin, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him," implying that if the man was working out the result of his sin it would not have been in order to have opened his eyes, but it was done for a specific purpose, therefore he gave him sight.

Again Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I am." Many Christian people ask: Was he not Melchisedek? They little know when they ask this question that they are believing in reincarnation—but this is true, however. And there are many inferential evidences throughout the teachings of the Christ that reincarnation was accepted as a law, and as it was settled beyond question in the minds of the people with whom Christ was dealing—for nearly the whole Oriental world believed in reincarnation—it was unnecessary that it should form a part of his instructions.

[←16]

It should be borne in mind that according to Usher's chronology this prophecy was uttered about 400 years after the death of David.

[←17]

The mere suggestion of the final unity of man and woman opens the door to temptation and deception. When a man who is trying to live the regenerate life, to conquer the sex passions, comes into the presence of a good woman, it seems to stimulate and to strengthen all his powers. He feels assured that she would be a great help to him in the regenerate life, in obtaining these grand ultimates. But we speak from the experience of thousands during the last ten years of our work, when we say that in every case they find themselves disappointed; they have met the god of generation, face to face, and are enslaved by him, or the two are forced to separate under great difficulty and sorrow. When one realizes the great truth that there are two factors in the world, creation and re-creation, generation and regeneration, and that generation is the p. 260 one factor now dominating the whole world, he may perhaps understand that no man in union with woman can meet and conquer it. He must first absolutely conquer it within himself in all its powers. For in the regeneration man and woman, in their unity, must have absolute control of the god of creation—over every creative-power in the world; and not only so, but they must be so strong that they can even take of the life, the fires of the Spirit and control them absolutely, which is an achievement as many times greater than anything that we have ever known as the day is brighter than the night. Because of this the Lord by the prophet Isaiah said, "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?"

[←18]

The distinction here made between the god of creation and Elohim, the Creator, is this: The god of creation is the embodied Word of Elohim, whose office and function it is to carry on creation through generation and all its attendant factors. The god of creation is the intelligent power that binds and holds men and women subject to the material laws governing production and reproduction, death and reincarnation. The god of creation was anciently known as the serpent god, and was represented by a mighty sage surrounded by serpents of every character, through whose power (the psychic power) man is held under the law of sin and death for the purpose of developing mind and soul powers, against the time of maturity and the harvest of the world.

[←19]

The Orientals worship images of the ideals of their gods, the Catholic church has images of the ideals of the Lord Christ and of the Virgin Mary, and the Protestant church has the image of an ideal man in the mind, and there is really no difference so far as the image is concerned, whether it be materialized or a mental image, it is in the cause world a formation just the same. When man makes an image of the Christ who lived in the form of man, he worships the material body, the flesh, and so do the Pagan nations who worship their idols, which are representations of the flesh.

[←20]

As "Yahveh Elohim" is the name of the collective Body, we have used it in the singular in many places.

[←21]

The names "Yahveh" and "Elohim" are connected in different ways in the various books of the Old Testament. For instance, Ezekiel generally uses the form "Elohim Yahveh," while Isaiah generally uses the form "Yahveh Elohim." This may be distinguished in our English translations in the following manner: The words translated "God" and "Lord" written with initial capitals only, are in the Hebrew "Elohim," with the exception that wherever the name "Almighty God" occurs, in the Hebrew it is El Elyon; but when all the letters are capitalized thus, "LORD" or "GOD" these appellations are substitutes for the name "Yahveh." By careful attention to the meaning and use of these names, it will be found that they will reveal many important truths heretofore covered, but in a general way brought to light in this work. The word "Elohim" is not only the name of the great Brotherhood, but its meaning is power; and the name "Yahveh" is not only the name of the Infinite, the All-pervading Spirit, but it expresses the Will, the ability to do and to be, the Almighty Will.

Table of Contents

Logical Structure of this Work

Preface

To The Reader

Chapter 1. Development

Chapter 2. The Existence Of Higher Faculties

Chapter 3. Reason And Religion

Chapter 4. Conscience

Chapter 5. Evolution

Chapter 6. Other Worlds Than Ours

Chapter 7. The Immensity Of The Universe

Chapter 8.The Great Name, Yahveh

Chapter 9. The Manifestation Of Yahveh

Chapter 10. Mind-Centers

Chapter 11. The Elohim

Chapter 12. The Eternal Order Of Melchisedek

Chapter 13. Jesus Of The Order Of Melchisedek

Chapter 14. The Angels Of God

Chapter 15. The Miraculous Conception

Chapter 16. The Image Of God

Chapter 17. The Likeness Of God

Chapter 18. The Likeness Of God

Chapter 19. The Likeness Of God

Chapter 20. The Image And The Likeness

The Personal Application

EXIT FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW

Chapter 21. Part 1

Chapter 22. Part 2

Chapter 23. Part 3

Chapter 24. Part 4

Chapter 25. Part 5

Chapter 26. Part 6. Prayer